A group of Dendrochronologists is upset at Mike Mann’s shoddy dendro paper in Nature Geoscience last February. They have managed to get a rebuttal published. One of the authors of the rebuttal is none other than Keith Briffa.
Hi guys, while ago I read a research paper which discussed how wind turbine noise causes problems to people. Can’t find it now. Does anyone remember it and have a link?
Thanks
Thanks Andy. I wonder whether Gareth Hughes thinks the “precautionary principle ” should be applied to turbines because of this and a moratorium placed on building any more . At the least I would have thought that Windflow Technology should advise the Stock Exchange of this massive risk to their business and suspend all trading of shares. 🙂
Well, the windies try to keep it quiet because any threat of litigation (particularly in the US) would seriously impede their business, especially with regard to the 2km setback rule proposed for the UK (see my site and count how many are closer than 2km)
I’ve had bit to do with measuring sound and vibration from wind farms (Even edited a book on it for the 2010 Tararua wind farm hearing.) and there is, indeed, growing evidence that the low-frequency sound and infrasound can cause lots of problems. (directly stimulates the cochlea, triggers the flight-or-flight response, and the semi-circular canals causing dizziness and nausea)
Trouble is that the acousticians paid by the wind companies (I.e. most of them) take the approach that “if you can’t hear it, it can’t harm you.” Try applying THAT logic to radioactivity and see where it gets you. All sound measurements used to determine compliance use the A-weighting curve that virtually ignores anything below 20 Hz.
Add to that the fact that they only use 10-minute averages and you can ignore the amplitude modulation that produces the swish-swish-swish noise and the so-called rumble-thump when you get a wind gust. Put it all together and you find that many people close to wind farms (some as far as 10 km away) are driven to distraction. In fact, given the lack of sleep that ensues, some become mentally unstable. I’ve seen it.
Have a look on the web for the film “Pandora’s Pinwheels” for some first-hand descriptions. (That’s a plug since I feature in there briefly.)
There seems to be an increasingly large body of evidence that low frequency modulation from wind turbines is causing health issues.
I keep hearing the same story: it sounds like a tumble-drier in my room, I need to sleep in the basement, I need to move away from my home just to get sleep, etc.
I don’t believe all these stories are made up. I had recent experience from a neighbour’s heat pump that caused me sleepless nights. The noise was not discernible during the day, but at night the walls had a low frequency rattle that prevented sleep, even with ear-plugs
We resolved the issue by swapping round the bedroom arrangement in our house
People may belitle these issues, but it is like persistent back pain. Unless you have experienced it, you don;t realise how bad it is
As I watched your documentary Huub, which I found very interesting (I had no idea of this detrimental effect of wind farms), the thought occurred to me that yet again the greenies have been hijacked by big business. What would they say if they found out that wind farms adversely affect the flora and fauna of which they are so protective? I would imagine that even off-shore wind farms would have a vibrational effect on marine life.
Mike, if you watch the Lost Horizons film, which is mainly about the so-called Atlantic Array, they claim that the development will completely destroy the North Devon fishing industry, which has been fishing sustainably in the area for generations.
Given that they will place massive concrete piles on the sea bed over a period of years, I have no reasons to doubt that they are right.
Furthermore, this area has populations of dolphins etc that will be impacted adversely
What I got from the doco was that these wind turbines have low-frequency pulses with extremely long wavelengths. These travel a long way in our atmosphere. Even further in the oceans. They can have the effect of setting up resonant harmonics within a building or other hollow-cavity structure. They apparently have physiological effects too. Perhaps a resonance within certain skulls, causing headaches, nausea and dizziness. So, maybe the dolphins, poster child of ocean health, will experience some health problems from these offshore behemoths. Which is very speculative on my part. Maybe I can get a grant to do some research. Or more likely, Huub will point out the errors in my theory.
Many years ago I worked with a newly-retired very senior Air Force aircraft engineer. He insisted low-frequency sound was really bad for the health of any animals, including humans, and despite driving a very quiet and somewhat luxurious car (a 6-cylinder Rolls-engined BMC thingy) he and his wife always wore very large headsets with built-in intercom system when they travelled any distance. They reckoned that blanking out as much low-frequency noise from the chassis and tyres as possible translated into remaining fresh and mentally sharp for hours on the road.
Also, I once lived a couple of miles from a very successful helicopter-pilot training establishment; the noise from learners practising ‘auto-rotations’ on a still night for hours on end was dementia-inducing. Engine noise was no problem but the sounds of the rotary wings thumping the air was appalling.
When we received a good offer for that property we couldn’t get rid of it quickly enough.
My experience with Canadian windfarms was that they were quiet, but I was just wandering around them during the day. I have thought that the jet lag and car lag I used to get was related to the constant, low-frequency rumble in aircraft and cars. Same in long-distance, diesel buses. Trains, not so much.
I’ve spent weeks in Atco trailers parked beside drilling rigs. The noise is constant, a rumble. Sleeping is hard, but that could be because the drilling and generators regularly change, and also because rig hands drop bags of samples through a special sample door regularly through the night. But the low level noise really gets to you. You have to get away, get some quiet.
I also spent months on the Arctic tundra, sleeping in tents. The wind can go on for days, bad enough to ground aircraft, including helicopters. The sound rolls around your head whichever way you turn. All you want is some place quiet to go to.
So I know that constant noise, particularly low frequency, can drive you crazy, ruin your sleep and leave you unable to concentrate or be peaceful. But that was always for something I could hear.
What is the wind turbine problem? Conscious or unconscious noise?
GENEVA/DOHA, 28 November 2012 (WMO) – The years 2001–2011 were all among the warmest on record, and, according to the World Meteorological Organization, the first ten months indicate that 2012 will most likely be no exception despite the cooling influence of La Niña early in the year.
WMO’s provisional annual statement on the state of the global climate also highlighted the unprecedented melt of the Arctic sea ice and multiple weather and climate extremes which affected many parts of the world. It was released today to inform negotiators at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Doha, Qatar.
January-October 2012 has been the ninth warmest such period since records began in 1850. The global land and ocean surface temperature for the period was about 0.45°C (0.81°F) above the corresponding 1961–1990 average of 14.2°C, according to the statement.
The year began with a weak-to-moderate strength La Niña, which had developed in October 2011. The presence of a La Niña during the start of a year tends to have a cooling influence on global temperatures, and this year was no different. After the end of the La Niña in April 2012, the global land and ocean temperatures rose increasingly above the long-term average with each consecutive month. The six-month average of May–October 2012 was among the four warmest such periods on record.
“Naturally occurring climate variability due to phenomena such as El Niño and La Niña impact on temperatures and precipitation on a seasonal to annual scale. But they do not alter the underlying long-term trend of rising temperatures due to climate change as a result of human activities,” said WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud.
“The extent of Arctic sea ice reached a new record low. The alarming rate of its melt this year highlighted the far-reaching changes taking place on Earth’s oceans and biosphere. Climate change is taking place before our eyes and will continue to do so as a result of the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which have risen constantly and again reached new records,” added Mr Jarraud.
The Arctic reached its lowest annual sea ice extent since the start of satellite records on 16 September at 3.41 million square kilometers. This was 18% less than the previous record low of 18 September, 2007. The 2012 minimum extent was 49 percent or nearly 3.3 million square kilometers (nearly the size of India) below the 1979–2000 average minimum. Some 11.83 million square kilometers of Arctic ice melted between March and September 2012.
WMO will release a 10-year report on the state of the climate, “2001-2010, A Decade of Extremes” on 4 December 2012. It was produced in partnership with other United Nations and international agencies and highlights the warming trend for the entire planet, its continents and oceans during the past decade, with an indication of its impacts on health, food security and socio-economic development.
‘rising temperatures due to climate change as a result of human activities’
Yes, a minute maximum of 1.2C warming for every doubling of CO2. I wonder how many hundreds of years before the CO2 levels double again – 200, 300, 400, 1000?
Lucky for everyone there’s no positive feedback from water vapour isn’t it Brandoch.
Come on, lads, you can do better than this. Does anyone have the time to properly refute some of the statements in the press release, or to point out where logic has failed them?
Magoo was on the right track, although there’s a big difference between observing warming and identifying the cause.
The problem is, Richard, that it’s just the same old nonsense and half-truths all over again.
However, let me try to fix their press release for them.
GENEVA/DOHA, 28 November 2012 (WMO) – The years 2001–2011 were all among the warmest on record since the low point at the end of the Little Ice Age. Before that, during the MWP, RWP and Minoan WP temperatures were higher, and this was due purely to natural variability. According to the World Meteorological Organization, the first ten months indicate that 2012 will most likely be no exception despite the cooling influence of La Niña early in the year. It is noted, however, that 2012 will most likely not turn out to be a record warm year, and will be well below the expected temperatures as predicted by the SRES series of model runs using the A1B scenario.
WMO’s provisional annual statement on the state of the global climate also highlighted the unprecedented melt of the Arctic sea ice and multiple weather and climate extremes which affected many parts of the world. It was released today to inform negotiators at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Doha, Qatar. Also noted was the unprecedented high freeze of the Antarctic sea ice which occurred at the same time, and that none of the climate extremes seen this year were in any way unusual, based on over a hundred years of records. In fact, the year was very average, and even tropical storm Sandy was unable to end the current record for the longest period without a land-falling major hurricane in the USA. Also noted was the very low tropical cyclone ACE value this year, keeping recent values near the 30-year low.
January-October 2012 has been the ninth warmest such period since records began in 1850. The global land and ocean surface temperature for the period was about 0.45°C (0.81°F) above the corresponding 1961–1990 average of 14.2°C, according to the statement, although one should note that the period 1961-1990 was an acknowledged low point of the 20th century, and we really should have updated our baseline to 1981-2010 by now, in line with most other organisations worldwide. We would also note, however, that should we do so the alarmist nature of the 0.45°C would be lost when it diminished to something like 0.1°C. It is also worth noting that while some people have conjectured that this small increase since 1976 is caused by human activities, the WMO takes a longer view of climate, and cannot exclude the possibility that natural variability caused the 1976-1998 increase, especially since the MWP, RMP and Minoan WPs were all warmer than today, as noted above.
The year began with a weak-to-moderate strength La Niña, which had developed in October 2011. The presence of a La Niña during the start of a year tends to have a cooling influence on global temperatures, and this year was no different. After the end of the La Niña in April 2012, the global land and ocean temperatures rose increasingly above the long-term average with each consecutive month. This was both unsurprising and uninteresting, and we really shouldn’t have mentioned it, except that it sounds alarmist. It happens every time the planet moves from La Nina to El Nino conditions. The six-month average of May–October 2012 was among the four warmest such periods on record, but, as noted above this means nothing from an anthropogenic point of view.
“Naturally occurring climate variability due to phenomena such as El Niño and La Niña impact on temperatures and precipitation on a seasonal to annual scale. But they do not alter the underlying long-term trend of rising temperatures due to climate change as a result of human activities,” said WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud. However, naturally occurring climate variability due to other phenomena do impact our climate on longer timescales. We know this because of previous variaitions in climate, such as the Warm Periods noted previously, and the Little Ice Age (LIA). Because of this, we simply cannot ascribe any current warming to human causes, since nothing we see puts any recent warming outside of previous rates.
“The extent of Arctic sea ice reached a new record low. The alarming rate of its melt this year highlighted the cyclic nature of this region of the planet, as has been observed throughout the ages. The simultaneous record high Antarctic sea ice extent shows that the earth’s balance is however being maintained, as expected.
Climate is changing, as it always has, and will continue to do so regardless of the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which have risen constantly and again reached new records, albeit very far short of historical values that were reached at a time when life flourished across the world,” added Mr Jarraud.
The Arctic reached its lowest annual sea ice extent since the start of satellite records on 16 September at 3.41 million square kilometers. This was 18% less than the previous record low of 18 September, 2007. The 2012 minimum extent was 49 percent or nearly 3.3 million square kilometers (nearly the size of India) below the 1979–2000 average minimum. Some 11.83 million square kilometers of Arctic ice melted between March and September 2012. We are somewhat embarrassed to mention this, since everybody knows that the ice melts every year between March and September, and re-freezes again. But we’re hoping that some slower people won’t notice, and will simply quote us unthinkingly on skeptic blogs.
On the other hand, the Antarctic reached its highest annual sea ice extent since the start of satellite records on 22 September at 19.45 million square kilometers. This conclusively disproves the AGW hypothesis, which predicts that both Arctic and Antarctic regions will warm due to greenhouse gas rises, since there is very little water vapour in the atmosphere here. The fact that only one pole has warmed while the other has cooled shows that greenhouse gases are not the cause of this behaviour.
WMO will release a 10-year report on the state of the climate, “2001-2010, A Decade of Extremes” on 4 December 2012. It was produced in partnership with other United Nations and international agencies and highlights the warming trend for the entire planet, its continents and oceans during the past decade, with an indication of its impacts on health, food security and socio-economic development. We hope by this to greatly improve the power given to unelected global governance bodies, and make a tidy profit along the way via carbon trading and investments in heavily-subsidised green energy.
Part of the problem, BD, is that this press release mixes together observations of reality with theories of what caused those observations. So there’s been a little warming (perhaps!) but there’s no proof it was caused by humanity’s actions. You should dial back your scorn and derision and provide evidence of what you so strongly believe.
Richard, it is immaterial what I “believe”; what matters is what the World Meteorological Organisation OBSERVES is actually happening, as per their press release above.
Argue with that, if you can… but you can’t, because you don’t have a worldwide network of weather stations, ships, climatologists and satellites, do you?
Anyway, for even the most ill-informed, there is always hope, as per the following “road to Damascus” experience of an erstwhile Fox News devotee:
Then we go to the metrics that don’t support the hypothesizing Brando (e.g. HadCRUT4, RSS, UAH, OHC, SST, DLR, etc this century in particular). Is it a little inconvenient for you go there Brando?
And we’ve been to the IPCC’s bogus CO2 forcing expression. You’ve yet to go there Brando.
We’d like to go to the tropical tropospheric hotspot and positive water vapour feedback but we can’t can we Brando?
Then we go to the other natural forcings that overwhelm GHG forcing even if we accept the IPCC’s forcing expression and apply it (e.g. solar activity, cloudiness levels – Stephens et al). You don’t like going there at all do you Brando?
But we’ve gone over all this before and of course you deny it all don’t you Brando?
That was hilarious BD. I loved that video. the cracking voice, “there must be something we can do for the children”
Maybe I’ll have a Road to Damascus moment and the image of Lord Hansen will appear before me in a blaze of white light, surrounded by the prophets Mann and Trenberth
Don’t ever, again, use such a blatantly emotional, guilt-tripping excuse for an argument anywhere where I can read it. I have two daughters that I delight in and love dearly. I deplore your shoddy attempt to use that link with my children as some goad to make me do what I know to be totally wrong.
For your interest, I do not worry about them from a climate point of view (save if the next ice age arrives soon). Rather I fear that ordinary people, stampeded into making ruinous economic decisions as a country, will pauper them.
Harsh call, this is a totally fair argument. What if the scientific community is right and your little session group is wrong? You may have noticed that the New York Times, New Scientist, and others have been writing articles on how global warming is worse than we thought.
The ‘no warming in 15 years’ meme is disingenuous. Nine of the 10 hottest years on record have occurred since 2001. 2012 s going to probably going to come in at 9th, despite the La Nina.
I suspect that history will judge this generation harshly, as we did have a window of opportunity to act.
Shame Brandoch has gone, I was hoping to find out what Action on Climate Change he was proposing. perhaps the youth delegation at Doha can offer some insight.
Let’s all fly to Doha and tell the rest of the world to Take Action.
Can we do it?
Yes we can!
Let’s all Take Action now!
Etc.
Heh, I like it. But it turns out BD’s best advice was “gutless fool”. I wouldn’t put much store by anything he said. – RT
>”You may have noticed that the New York Times, New Scientist, and others have been writing articles on how global warming is worse than we thought.”
COP time, we expect that. They’re just regurgitating scary scripts provided by Potsdam et al – nothing really new of course.
>”The ‘no warming in 15 years’ meme is disingenuous. Nine of the 10 hottest years on record have occurred since 2001. 2012 s going to probably going to come in at 9th, despite the La Nina.”
Except the warmist meme is “on current trends we’re on track for 4 C warming this century” but the reality is that on current trends we’re on track for 0 C change – no warming or cooling.
>”What if the scientific community is right and your little session group is wrong? [……..]
I suspect that history will judge this generation harshly, as we did have a window of opportunity to act.”
We have the prediction from astrophysics (part of the “scientific community unless I’m badly mistaken) of a solar grand minimum and cool period over the next few decades to factor in to future scenario possibilities (something the IPCC seems reluctant to do).
A cool period similar to Maunder or Dalton and long before 2100, particularly in the NH, will have more immediate health and economic consequences than an off-track warming scenario. Even now, cold events kill humans and animals, wipe out fruit and crop harvests, and disrupt energy allocation to industry.
We have the evidence of this right here on this blog, just visit Open Threads: South America, Europe, Asia and read about it (Peru issued 97,000 blankets in July this year for people suffering colder than normal temperatures). This is the obscure news that the MSM doesn’t pick up, preferring to feed the unwary with a steady diet of warmist doom after the tenuous connection established from the latest “unprecedented” disaster, they’re blind to anything else even when dozens of people die of cold as they do every year.
History will be judging the climate science community harshly (not our “little session group”) if the astrophysics cooling prediction turns out correct and the CO2 warming prediction turns out wrong (as it is so far this century). We’ll know in only a couple of years who is right Simon.
You may have noticed that the New York Times, New Scientist, and others have been writing articles on how global warming is worse than we thought.
And you may have noticed how these articles offer no proof much beyond the Arctic sea ice, something that is actually completely irrelevant to us, considering that sea ice melting doesn’t raise sea levels. At the same time, we see total Antarctic ice volume (land and sea) increasing in extent. To confirm this, sea level rise has slowed.
We see very little warming over the past 16 years, at a time when Hansen predicted that the human fingerprint would stand out clearly. The small warming rate we have had is less than the models predicted. Surely this is good news? Surely it’s better than we thought?
>”…..you don’t have a worldwide network of weather stations, ships, climatologists and satellites, do you?”
No, don’t have GCM’s either. But we can compare those observations with IPCC CO2-forced GCM simulations and turns out the GCM simulations are out-of-the-money:-
>”….and poorly-understood disinformation and pseudoscience”
That would be the IPCC CO2-forced GCM simulations in the above linked comparison wouldn’t it, because they appear to be in conflict with the observations?
Richard, your faith in one carefully-selected contrarian scientist out of many thousands (Judith Curry) is hardly surprising, as she exhibits the same intellectual flaws as yourself:
Criticisms of Curry from her peers:
Curry’s contrarian-leaning “public outreach” public communication is criticized by prominent climate scientists and other science-aligned climate bloggers for a propensity toward “inflammatory language and over-the-top accusations …with the…absence of any concrete evidence and [with] errors in matters of simple fact.“[10],[11],[12],[13],[14],[15].
“…Examples of the unreliability of Curry’s blog publications are illustrated by Michael Tobis[16] and James Annan[17], who both showed basic flaws in her understanding of uncertainty and probability, or at least an irresponsible level of sloppiness in expressing herself. Arthur Smith pointed out an under-grad level misunderstanding[18] in her own field’s basic terminology,” said Coby Beck.[10]
Climate scientist James Annan has provided examples (with rebuttals) of assertions made by Curry on topics like no-feedback climate sensitivity, aerosols, climate change detection &attribution, and the IPCC tolerance of challengers; he finds there’s a pattern of “throwing up vague or demonstrably wrong claims, then running away when shown to be wrong“,[19]
Willingness to criticize based on second-hand info from contrarian, inexpert sources
“In a 2010 comment[20] she called blogger Deep Climate’s detailed and well-documented investigation into the Wegman Report “one of the most reprehensible attacks on a reputable scientist that I have seen” even as she revealed in her incorrect synopsis of the charges that she had not even read it for herself. … [i.e.] she shows herself ready to publicly criticise someone else in the strongest terms based entirely on second hand information gleaned from places like Climate Audit and Watts Up With That.”[10]
Offering off-the-cuff, uninformed criticism of mainstream climate science
Gavin Schmidt has criticised Curry for “not knowing enough about what she has chosen to talk about[21], for not thinking clearly about the claims she has made with respect to the IPCC[22], and for flinging serious accusations at other scientists without just cause.”[23].
2011: Berkeley Earth Project “BEST” dissension, and widely publicized claims of “pause”
Curry was a member of the partially-Koch-funded Berkeley Earth Project temperature reanalysis project headed by former global warming skeptic Richard Muller, which reanalyzed existing weather station data and found yes, global warming was real. The project FAQ[4] (and a draft paper, which lists Curry among the authors[5]) reported there was no evidence to indicate the rate of global warming had changed in the last decade.
But despite Curry’s having agreed (as evinced by her coauthorship) with this conclusion[citation needed], London Daily Mail contrarian (and oft-misrepresenting[6], [7], [8]) journalist David Rose portrayed a vigorously-disagreeing Curry saying, “This is ‘hide the decline’ stuff. Our data show the pause, just as the other sets of data do. Muller is hiding the decline.”[24].
Curry backtracked somewhat on her blog, saying “The article spun my comments in ways that I never intended”[24], but didn’t step back from “Our data show the pause”, and “There has been a lag/slowdown/whatever you want to call it in the rate of temperature increase since 1998.”[25] ,b>When pressed for the scientific basis for these statements, Curry admitted the time period was too short for a statistically significant difference to emerge.[citation needed]
In response Tamino noted, “There is Occam’s razor — … the simplest hypothesis (namely: the trend hasn’t changed) is preferable. Besides which, basing her statement on “It may have stopped since 1998” is really no different than “it may have stopped since last Thursday.””[9]
Criticisms of academic research
2011 WIRES article on uncertainty
Climatologist James Annan noted in passing that in this article Curry had “grossly misrepresented the IAC report.”[27].
Claims not backed up
The WIRES article also didn’t back up claims made earlier: in an earlier paper, Curry and Webster had said the forthcoming article “argues that the attribution argument cannot be well formulated in the context of Boolean logic or Bayesian probability…[and] argues that fuzzy logic provides a better framework…”[10] But when the WIRES paper appeared[11], it didn’t do so – not even mentioning fuzzy logic, Boolean logic or Bayesian probability.[28]. (When asked, Curry said her reviewers had found that section confusing, so “in the revised version, I simplified the argument”.[29])
2010: Liu and Curry
Liu and Curry’s August 2010 paper, “Accelerated warming of the Southern Ocean and its impacts on the hydrological cycle and sea ice”[30], has been criticized for its failure to cite previous papers drawing the same conclusion, and for its “uncritical use of invalid data,;”.[31], [32]
Spectacular rant against Judith Curry Brando but what has that got to do with IPCC GCM simulations off course against observations? Is it just that you prefer to attack the person?
BTW, this http://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/christy-fig.jpg?w=808&h=622 is not a JC graph, she just hosts it. But you might like to tell us all what exactly it is about it that offends you so much Brando. Isn’t this just what we should be doing, monitoring climate prediction KPI’s to check for prediction failure (just as the US Senate were doing when presented with the same graph)?
Hardly a measure from which to justify doling out Green Climate Fund billions is it?
>”Hardly a measure from which to justify doling out Green Climate Fund billions is it?”
Govts just might be noticing too, Greenpeace Cindy laments at HT (appropriately titled post ‘Things we could only have dreamed of’):-
“The other key issue is the Green Climate Fund – but right now there appears to be not enough money to pay for the staff to oversee the rules and framework that governments have been working so hard on.”
That’s the thing about bureaucracy Cindy, it’s not self funding and funding of this nature is invariably by tax revenue (tagged for other use these days) from developed countries – like the gas/coal/nuclear based industrial powerhouses of Germany, US, France and Japan.
Good on you Bob D for making the effort to give a serious reply
Problem with this silly season is there are so many unsound headline grabbers coming out of Doha that it would be impossible to find time to refute them all.
Problem with this silly season is there are so many unsound headline grabbers coming out of Doha that it would be impossible to find time to refute them all.
Sorry Guys, but attempting to persuade Brandon to accept a view of science he does not wish to even consider is obviously futile. His silly Hansenesque statements about future generations asking rhetorical questions are childish attempts to make us evil deniers feel guilty and repent and mend our ways!
And anyone who consistently quotes the egregious Skeptical Science, which bends history on it’s site and which supports the sneeringly-nasty Dr Lewandowsky in attempts to cast sceptics as loonies who will believe anything makes me chuckle.
Brandon has succeeded again and must be laughing his head off at our collective gullibility! He has once again hi-jacked a perfectly good thread that was developing nicely into a compendium of interesting facts and anecdotal evidence about the evils wrought by windmills and other sources of low-frequency noise.
I’m all in favour of having a quality conversation about various topics, but Brandoch makes that impossible.
DNFTT!!!
Ignore him indeed. Just another wannabe from the SKS “crusher crew” sent to annoy. Trouble is they keep getting shown up as ignorant and fooled by their own propaganda . Its funny to watch Bob and Richard make him squirm.As for SKS. , even Joe Romm says their analysis is weak!
Personally I’d ban Brando. But that’s up to RT.
Good stuff on wind turbines. Enough to start my own crusade to save my children. Lol
Banned? I am interested in the mechanism. I applaud the decision, even though I’m sure he/she will take it as some sort of a trophy. Does the mechanism ban his IP address, his email address or his handle. If any of these, then he can easily circumvent. ???
WordPress explains that when a comment contains any of the specified words in its content, name, URL, e-mail, or IP, it can be held for moderation or marked as spam.
The specified words can be anything, from a name to an IP address. So it’s very flexible, but you’re right: it can be circumvented. Until we twig to the fact that the new person is being rude and abusive!
Richard, in banning Brandoch you have taken the only practical step in getting us free of his silly games of clog-the-thread and his non-science. You acted to save this blog as Brandoch, in my view, would ultimately have annoyed so many so thoroughly that traffic here would have slumped to consist only of Brandoch and whoever else could be bothered challenging his nonsense.
Well done!
Seconded. We’re more than happy to discuss things reasonably, but as soon as these people just start to sling insults with every post, out they go, in my opinion.
t gets hard to explain what I believe happens at the molecular level, but I’ll give it a go.
Firstly, imagine an atmosphere without convection. Venus gets close to this because it is so dense. There is also very little wind because it rotates so slowly (244 Earth days per revolution) and so we can just about consider it to be a static atmosphere. Yet the (pseudo) adiabatic lapse rate is still observed and the same calculations that work for Earth also work there.
We know there are many more molecules where the pressure is higher, so we can assume there is a fairly smooth (near linear) decline in the density of molecules with increasing altitude.
So molecules don’t have to travel large distances up and down. Nor is it any restriction that as many go up as go down, because we already have the distribution we need. Energy can transfer in molecular collisions, without any particular molecule having to travel a significant distance.
So the temperature gradient is a bit like a concrete road going straight down a mountainside. If you pour loads of sand on it at various points (representing absorbed heat at different altitudes) the molecular interactions get temporarily thrown out of the nice equilibrium state they were in. The sand (heat) spreads out and blows away (energy gets radiated away) and it all settles back down to the supporting road.
However, if there is a long-term increase in mean Solar insolation levels it is more like adding a thin layer of concrete to the whole surface, creating a new road surface (temperature plot) which is higher but is still parallel to the old one and still has the same gradient. This is representative of what happens during warming periods in the natural ~1,000 (maybe ~1,400) year cycle and the superimposed ~60 year cycle.
So it’s as if the individual molecules being pulled downwards by gravity and pushed up by pressure from beneath realise they are in the wrong place on top of the pile of sand. So, like grains of sand spreading out, some go one way and some another way until the temperature hump (or dip) levels out and everything gets back to the natural gradient. Or, more precisely, their energy goes in different directions through collisions.
Hence, on Venus, if too much incident insolation is absorbed at the top of the atmosphere, the extra kinetic energy will be “bounced” down the chain (rather like conduction, but better called diffusion) without the individual molecules actually having to travel very far.
This creates an apparent heat flow, but it can only ever involve equal interchanges of PE and KE and thus no change in entropy, and so no violation of 2nd LoT.
Also, while this is happening, each layer in the Venus atmosphere will radiate away whatever extra energy it absorbs and hasn’t sent elsewhere by diffusion, so the temperature falls back to the base line.
As you go from day to night, I suggest that the whole temperature plot from the Venus surface to the TOA shifts downwards about 5 degrees, whilst retaining the same gradient.
Whatever happens, it is apparent that the surface itself will remain very close in temperature to the base of the atmosphere and its temperature is in fact at least “supported” by that of the base of the atmosphere, because conduction would prevent it getting significantly cooler. Stored energy beneath the crust would also have a stabilising effect as on Earth.
The overriding consideration is that, for both Earth and Venus, as well as other planets with thick enough atmospheres – Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune – this process must have happened in the atmosphere first (because of the effect of gravity) and then the surface temperature was established by that at the base of the atmosphere. The internal conduction plot from the core is then also set by the core temperature and the surface temperature. This of course all took a long time obviously at least millions of years, so, in the short term of just a few thousand years, the mass of energy under the surface changes little and so provides a solid stabilising effect.
Hope that’s helped clarify my thinking on all this. It leaves the conventional back radiation and feedback concepts right out of consideration – simply because they cannot override the mechanism which maintains the adiabatic lapse rate. So much for the AGW conjecture!
…this process must have happened in the atmosphere first (because of the effect of gravity) and then the surface temperature was established by that at the base of the atmosphere.
Surely you mean “at the top of the atmosphere” in the case of Venus, due to the relative opacity of the atmosphere? After all, it is the TOA in this case that sets the surface temperature via the pressure gradient.
NGOs should remember that it costs us to bring them to conferences: US
DOHA: The US chief negotiator for climate change Jonathan Pershing has reminded the international green NGOs at Doha that it pays to bring them to these conferences.
He said so in a closed door meeting with the NGO representatives suggesting that they should remember who pays for their presence. TOI accessed the conversation recordings done secretly.
“We are one of the funders to make it possible for you to be at the table. I hope you recognize that many of you who come to the meetings you do, the US fights for you at every chance to give you a chance to be in this room,” he said.
In what is being considering rather patronizing by those who have heard the conversation, the US said, “What we also think is the participation of a lot of countries out there includes the ones that disagree with us.”
The US has come in under scathing comments by civil society recently from the developed and the developing countries for neither putting up the funds nor increasing their emission reduction targets even after President Obama in his victory speech recently said that he had not done enough in his first term to address climate change.
[…]
The global civil society plays a crucial role in the climate change negotiations especially mobilizing public pressure to force countries to do more. Though the civil society remains often divided on how much the rich countries or the emerging economies need to do, at the Doha meeting the EU and the US have come under tremendous criticism for neither putting up more money nor increasing their emission reduction pledges which right now stand lower than that of the developing countries.
Yes I have been reading a bit about “common purpose” recently too. There are some rather dubious organisations steering our societies out there.
Other than the fact that you can have your foster children taken away from you if you are a member of Ukip, did you know that you can be deemed unfit to adopt (in the UK) if you have a body mass index that is too high?
Comparing climate projections to observations up to 2011. Rahmstorf et al 2012
“global temperature continues to increase in good agreement with the best estimates of the IPCC, especially if we account for the effects of short-term variability due to the El Niño/Southern Oscillation, volcanic activity and solar variability.”
1. The abstract says that “global temperature continues to increase in good agreement with the best estimates of the IPCC…” But Figure 1 clearly shows the stasis in global surface temperatures since about 1995, which contradicts that statement.
2. The abstract continues: “…especially if we account for the effects of short-term variability due to the El Niño/Southern Oscillation, volcanic activity and solar variability.” But at WUWT Bob Tisdale explains that you cannot remove the effects of ENSO in the way Rahmstorf claims to have done.
3. Even if this paper demonstrates a recent global temperature increase it does not help us understand its causes.
It seems ironic, given the debate about the reliability of climate models, that the paper advises “Our results highlight the need to thoroughly validate models with data of past climate changes before applying them to projections.” But I strongly agree.
Hi Richard T, thanks for taking the time to look at the paper. To comment on the points you raise:
1. Figure 1 shows about 0.2 (0.3 in the adjusted series) degrees of temperature increase since 1995. Can you please explain how you interpret this as stasis?
2. I find Bob’s claims unconvincing. As far as I can tell his thesis is that part of the world’s oceans do not follow ENSO. How he gets from here to his claim that the effects of ENSO cannot therefore be removed from the global temperature series is unclear. If you have a better understanding of what he is getting at I would appreciate some clarification.
3. This paper demonstrates that once short term noise from known causes is removed the IPCC predictions are very accurate The IPCC predictions assume CO2 forcing so I think this paper adds weight to the argument that CO2 significantly forces global temperatures.
I still haven’t had the chance to read it, but a few things spring to mind:
1/ The tropospheric hot spot is supposed to be warming faster that surface temperature, but if Rahmstorf is right then it would appear the upper troposphere is warming at a much slower rate than the surface temperature (or lower troposphere), and as a result debunks AGW theory on the grounds that there is no positive feedback from water vapour. Either the upper troposphere is cooling in relation to the lower troposphere, or the ground temperature data are exaggerated (i.e. Rahmstorf is wrong). As CO2 can only warm the atmosphere at 1.2C maximum per doubling, Rahmstorf’s temperature rises must be from something non-anthropogenic, as a mid/upper troposphere that is warming at a slower rate than the lower troposphere proves the warming can’t be due positive water vapour feedback but a forcing other than CO2.
Another thing, Rahmstorf says the following:
‘Observed annual global temperature, unadjusted (pink) and adjusted for short-term variations due to solar variability, volcanoes and ENSO (red) as in Foster and Rahmstorf (2011).’
Do the models take these factors into account and make these adjustments and if not, how is it that Rahmstorf’s data can match the models when they both use different criteria to justify the adjustments? If the models don’t factor ‘solar variability, volcanoes and ENSO’ but Rahmstorf does, the match can’t show a reinforcement of the models as the results are through different criteria that invalidates the methods of each other. No? If Rahmstorf raises the temperature by including ‘solar variability, volcanoes and ENSO’, the same would be true for the models and they would disagree with Rahmstorf as they would also rise.
And we’d like to see your response to Magoo’s points Nick because if you’d actually considered the comment instead of dismissing it on a not-having-read-the-paper pretext, there’s still 2 cases to answer that he puts forward that don’t require word-for-word familiarity with the paper.
Rigorous analysis of unbiased observational data does not support the projections of future global warming predicted by computer models now proven to exaggerate warming and its effects.
The NOAA “State of the Climate in 2008” report asserted that 15 years or more without any statistically-significant warming would indicate a discrepancy between observation and prediction. Sixteen years without warming have therefore now proven that the models are wrong by their creators’ own criterion.
‘Global and diffuse solar radiation in Spain: Building a homogeneous dataset and assessing their trends’
from Global and Planetary Change
A. Sanchez-Lorenzo, J. Calbó, M. Wild (2012)
Solar/cloudiness forcing +3.9 Wm-2 per decade 1985-2010. By way of comparison, the alleged forcing from increased CO2 during the same period was only 0.41 Wm-2 per decade (+0.11 Wm-2 at the Earth surface). These figures are corroborated by Stephens et al 2012 and Wild et al 2012.
Up-thread from there you’ll find that the solar forcing is not even being measured directly by SORCE as we have been led to believe.
Then there’s the difference between PMOD (the warmists fav) and ACRIM. The flat trend in the PMOD composite is an artifact of uncorrected ERBS degradation. All explained here:-
“Scafetta and West 2008 found that up to 70% of the warming over the last 50 years can be explained by just TSI alone when you use the ACRIM dataset. This does not include other natural causes like Cloud Cover decrease, PDO, AMO, Volcanism etc.”
If we even accept the IPCC’s CO2 forcing curve as valid (it isn’t), CO2 is a very minor player at best. There are far greater forcings working and that has become abundantly clear as each new forcing paper (solar/cloud/aerosols in particular) and investigation revelation (SORCE/PMOD/ACRIM) helps piece together the explanations of climate since the LIA.
>”2. I find Bob’s claims unconvincing. As far as I can tell his thesis is that part of the world’s oceans do not follow ENSO. How he gets from here to his claim that the effects of ENSO cannot therefore be removed from the global temperature series is unclear. If you have a better understanding of what he is getting at I would appreciate some clarification.”
Energy divergences.
Tisdale:-
Those two divergences [Figure 3] are referred to in Trenberth et al (2002) Evolution of El Nino–Southern Oscillation and global atmospheric surface temperatures” as ENSO residuals. Trenberth et al write:
Although it is possible to use regression to eliminate the linear portion of the global mean temperature signal associated with ENSO, the processes that contribute regionally to the global mean differ considerably, and the linear approach likely leaves an ENSO residual.
Again, the divergences in Figure 3 shown in brown are those ENSO residuals. They result because the naturally created warm water released from below the surface of the West Pacific Warm Pool by the El Niño events of 1986/87/88 and 1997/98 are not “consumed” by those El Niño events. In other words, there’s warm water left over from those El Niño events and that leftover warm water directly impacts the sea surface temperatures of the East Indian and West Pacific Oceans, preventing them from cooling during the trailing La Niñas. The leftover warm water, tending to initially accumulate in the South Pacific Convergence Zone (SPCZ) and in the Kuroshio-Oyashio Extension (KOE), also counteracts the indirect (teleconnection) impacts of the La Niña events on remote areas, like land surface temperatures and the sea surface temperatures of the North Atlantic.
Same for the North Atlantic, Figure 4, as Tisdale states “which show the same ENSO-related divergences even though the North Atlantic data is isolated from the tropical Pacific Ocean and, therefore, not directly impacted by the ENSO events”.
There’s something blatantly obvious in the graph of the detrended Rest-of-the-World sea surface temperature anomalies (Figure 3): If the Rest-of-the-World data responded proportionally during the 1988/89 and 1998-2001 La Niña events, the Rest-of-the-World data would appear similar to the East Pacific data (Figure 2) and would have no warming trend.
Because those divergences exist—that is, because the Rest-of-the-World data does not cool proportionally during those La Niña events—the Rest-of-the-World data acquires a warming trend, as shown in Figure 5. In other words, the warming trend, the appearance of upward shifts, is caused by the failure of the Rest-of-the-World sea surface temperature anomalies to cool proportionally during those La Niña events.
Note that Figure 5 is an El Niño dominated era in which energy is not “consumed” (as Tisdale puts it) between events. Figure 5 would look very different in a La Niña dominated era and it is not out of the question that climate is now entering such an era. The same upward climate shifts (steps) will not occur as in the Figure 5 era and there’s nothing to discount downward shifts instead.
Basically, the different ocean regions cannot be considered a homogeneous mass with heat transfers performing completely in sync throughout from which ENSO can be plucked out because ENSO is integral to planetary energy distribution whether that leads to heat accumulation or release outside of the actual event but each region performs differently i.e. global warming or cooling is not “global”.
The other way of looking at it is that if ENSO is to be taken out of climate then the residual ENSO energy must be taken out too (in an an El Niño dominated era), something Foster and Rahmstorf do not do. All that’s left then is a meaningless flat non-climate sans shifts.
But then how would a La Niña dominated era be treated?
>”But then how would a La Niña dominated era be treated?”
Rahmstorf, Foster and Cazenave don’t actually state the period of their study except to say “past few decades” “up to 2011” but we can deduce from Figure 1 that their GAT period begins at 1980:-
1980 – 2011 was an El Niño dominated period with 2 major events in particular – 82/83 and 97/98. The period prior to that (1950 – 1980) was dominated by La Niña conditions and the climate cooled over that period.
RF&C’s approach only works – that is, to return a warming trend – over the 1980 – 2011 period. It would NOT work to support warming over the 1950 – 1980 period because the opposite to removing energy in a period of generally positive MEI departure (warmiing, uptrend, accumulation of energy) as RF&C have done is to add energy in during a period of generally negative MEI departure (cooling, downtrend, release of energy). That is simply a nonsensical approach.
Given that from about 2006 the indication from the MEI is a cyclical return to negative MEI departure similar to 1950 – 1980 (30 years), it follows that we could reasonably expect conditions similar to that regime to become dominant out to around 2036 (30 years), although that’s not for certain.
Rahmstorf, Foster and Cazenave are only looking at half the MEI picture because that is the aspect that suits their warmist perspective.
Hi Richard C,
Since Rahmstorf et al are demonstrating the accuracy of the IPCC predictions once short term noise from known factors is removed it seems nonsensical to start any earlier than 1980 since there were no IPCC predictions in this period to compare against.
In any case Bob Tisdale’s analysis also starts in 1980 and he is attempting to explain away global temperature increases rather than reconcile them with the IPCC projections so any claim of cherry picking should more correctly be aimed at Bob. I’m pretty sure his claim that SST warming is caused by ENSO breaks down before 1980.
>”it seems nonsensical to start any earlier than 1980 since there were no IPCC predictions in this period to compare against.”
But there IS an MEI record. Besides, now you’re jumping from RF&C to IPCC. Make up your mind what you want us to address. You asked for comments on RF&C, not IPCC projections or hindcasts
>”In any case Bob Tisdale’s analysis also starts in 1980″
That’s because he’s undertaken an apples-to-apples analysis of RF&C
>”…and he is attempting to explain away global temperature increases”
Rubbish. His non-detrended graphs show the increase. He doesn’t explain AWAY anything. He (and Trenberth) explains that RF&C cannot just pluck out an ENSO event because there is residual energy from that event that dissipates (or not, depends on the region) over the subsequent period.
“>rather than reconcile them with the IPCC projections”
Again, why are you carrying on about IPCC “projections” when you’ve asked about RF&C? But in response anyway, any simulation prior to 2000 is a hindcast, not a projection. IPCC CMIP3 simulations (AR4) did NOT hindcast the 30s/40s warming or the following 50s to late 70s period. The simulations miss that peak altogether despite fuzzy AR4 graphs that attempt to create the impression they did.
>”…so any claim of cherry picking should more correctly be aimed at Bob”
Rubbish. There is NO REASON whatsoever for RF&C not to utilize the full MEI record. Tisdale was merely following their lead but his analysis is inadequate too but as a result of RF&C’s initial cherry-picked period and his analysis of it, not because he chose that period himself.
>”I’m pretty sure his claim that SST warming is caused by ENSO breaks down before 1980.”
There was no warming. This is entirely consistent with the La Niña dominated regime at the time. But as soon as El Niño dominates again, SST rises to about 2004:-
SST warming AND cooling is totally in sync with ENSO. Meantime, over the entire period there is a solar forcing acting also beginning back at the LIA (totally understated by the IPCC to-date) but ENSO modulates the solar heat accumulation (along with thermal lag, currents, overturning etc) so that there is no gradual upwards trend. Now that solar activity is in recession, SST can be expected to cool (as is has since 2004) rather than just flatten as it did 1940 – 1980 when solar activity was rising.
Hi Richard C,
Not sure if you noticed but all the graphs in Bob’s WUWT post were from his youtube video which was released before the Rahmstorf et al paper was published. Bob cannot be consider to be “following their lead”. Rather he has put some new words around work he had already done, probably for his book which he promotes at the end of the post.
Finally since the Rahmstorf et al paper specifically deals with the IPCC projections I think it is reasonable to include them in the discussion. I’m not sure why you take issue with this.
Didn’t do too well around 1910 either. And now they don’t mimic 21st century, all because the simulations are following the LD/ML CO2 curve instead of factoring in real drivers.
>”Bob cannot be consider to be “following their lead”. ”
His WUWT post was as a result of a request to respond to RF&C so obviously he was following their lead because their paper is the subject of his post.
>”Rather he has put some new words around work he had already done, probably for his book which he promotes at the end of the post.”
EXACTLY, Bob Tisdale wrote the ENSO book – literally.
>”Finally since the Rahmstorf et al paper specifically deals with the IPCC projections I think it is reasonable to include them in the discussion. I’m not sure why you take issue with this.”
Your assumption is that to compare the RF&C series (that you and they term “observations”), the series must be a valid observation series – it isn’t. In any case once the full 20th/21st century SST, MEI, HadCRUT3 record is considered (as my previous comment), both RF&C and IPCC fail. RF&C because their approach is nonsense during generally negative MEI departure periods and their ignorance of residual ENSO energy. IPCC because their hindcasts and forecasts don’t mimic climate.
The acute positive departure at 1940 (when SST was high) then negative at 1950 (when SST was low) is clearly evident as is the negative to positive change at 1980.
>”The 1950-1980 period shows reasonable warming which as I stated earlier demonstrates that Bob’s theory breaks down”
No the fact remains, your 1950 – 1980 SST “warming” did not rise above 1940 levels as per my 1940 – 1980 plot except for a 1977 spike that comes close i.e. that negative MEI/PDO regime was cooler than the 30s and 40s positive PDO regime and there is no “break down” in MEI/PDO/SST linkage, it is completely synchronous 1900 – present.
>”How did they come to the conclusion that these were “known” variables?”
This goes back to F&R 2011 on which Tisdale posted twice. There is some explanation here in the first post along with the criticisms in the section “ENSO is not an exogenous factor” e.g. Trenberth et al 2002, C&S 2010, Thompson et al 2008.
Basically, there are “known” exogenous factors e.g. TSI (when the data is valid, F&R use PMOD but ACRIM explains 70% of warming after corrections) and volcanic aerosols but ENSO is not one of those. As Tisdale puts it in summary after Fig 17, ENSO is a coupled ocean-atmosphere process that cannot be accounted for with a simple linear regression.
>”I did not choose the 1950-1980 period you did. Now you appear to prefer 1940-1980 period.”
I explained why Nick. MEI only starts at 1950. If MEI started at 1940 i could have included that period but I CANNOT, hence my subsequent recourse to PDO which is a longer index. This is second time I’ve explained this, I hope there doesn’t have to be a third.
>”Neither of these periods show the cooling you claim,
The 1930s/40s were clearly warmer in absolute terms than the 1950s – 1970s i.e. cooling. And there has been a cooling trend in SST since 2004.
>”..although the warming from 1950-1980 is much stronger.”
1950-1980 doesn’t rise above 30s/40s levels as I’ve already pointed out. Again I hope I don’t have to explain this a third time
>”Just to clarify, what exactly is your definition of cherry picking?”
The most desirable selection to suit an ulterior motive e.g. Rahmstorf, Foster and Cazenova picking 1980 as their start point because including the rest of the century ruins their warmist narrative. The last century SST looks like this with the 30 yr trends at each end compared:-
If I were a warmist, I would not be comfortable attempting to explain why – in terms of CO2 forcing – the early trend is steeper than the most recent trend therefore I would simply ignore the earlier data as FR&C did. Neither could I explain the intervening period in terms of CO2 forcing either when it is so obviously out of kilter with the warming either side. That is the essence of cherry picking Nick; to EXCLUDE the inconvenient.
The IPCC models vs Obs would look so much better if they didn’t have to include that pesky 30s/40s warm period and the negative trend in the polynomial that results in HadCRUT3 1945 – 1965 or the 1915 – 1935 steepness, fortunately they cannot be so blatant:-
Late 1970s to present produces the most positive departure and late 1800s – early 1900s produces the most negative departure, again generally coinciding with respective warm and cool SST periods e.g. the 1877ish positive in among the negative of the period coincides with an SST spike at that time:-
Nick, you say “the IPCC predictions are very accurate”.
Ben Santer seems to disagree:
On average, the models analyzed … overestimate the warming of the troposphere. Although the precise causes of such differences are unclear…
The multimodel average tropospheric temperature trends are outside the 5–95 percentile range of RSS results at most latitudes. The likely causes of these biases include forcing errors in the historical simulations (40–42), model response errors (43), remaining errors in satellite temperature estimates (26, 44), and an unusual manifestation of internal variability in the observations (35, 45). These explanations are not mutually exclusive. Our results suggest that forcing errors are a serious concern.
This article concludes with this, with regard to Ben Santer:
“Failing to give due credit. Hiding the decline. Truncating the data. Threatening violence to critics. This is the AGW way.”
“This paper (Rahmstorf et al) demonstrates that once short term noise from known causes is removed the IPCC predictions are very accurate”
Ben’s paper says:
“Although the precise causes of such differences are unclear, model biases in lower stratospheric temperature trends are likely to be reduced by more realistic treatment of stratospheric ozone depletion and volcanic aerosol forcing.”
So actually I think Ben and Rahmstorf et al are largely in agreement that the removal of short term noise (ENSO, aerosols etc.) from known causes is the key to interpreting the IPCC predictions.
Finally got around to reading Rahmstorf Nick. As I said before, if he’s right then there are major problems with the AGW theory.
The mid-upper troposphere is supposed to be warming at a faster rate than the lower troposphere/surface temperatures, & if it was it would be evidence of positive feedback from water vapour. The upper troposphere has not warmed as expected and the lower troposphere and surface temperatures are higher than the mid-upper troposphere.
If Rahmstorf and the models are correct then the discrepancy between the upper troposphere and the surface temperatures are worse than ever. This proves empirically that there is no positive feedback from water vapour. As water vapour is supposed to be the vast majority of global warming the question is raised – in the absence of water vapour, what else could be driving the increasing temperatures?
1/ It can’t be CO2 as it can only raise the temperature a maximum of 1.2C per doubling of total atmospheric CO2 concentrations – i.e. it’s too weak.
2/ It can’t be other feedbacks as all of them combined are still much, much weaker than water vapour – i.e. they’re too weak.
3/ Ground temperatures are overestimating the temperatures. Possible.
4/ There is another forcing that is non-anthropogenic that is causing the warming. Possible
The fact of the matter is that, if the upper troposphere is warming at a slower rate than the surface there are no grounds for the warming being anthropogenic in nature. This is due to the fact that, without positive feedback from water vapour, CO2 is just too weak to cause the warming by itself. Even if CO2 is combined with all the other known feedbacks except water vapour it is still too weak by a large margin.
Either one of the following is true but not both:
1/ Either the ground temperatures are exaggerated making the upper troposphere look like it’s warming at a slower rate than the ground.
2/ The models and Rahmstorf’s ground temperatures are correct and the surface really IS warming at a faster rate than the mid-upper troposphere, thereby invalidating positive feedback from water vapour.
Whichever is true, the AGW hypothesis fails as a result. The lack of a tropospheric hot spot is a major hitch for AGW theory, and until it is addressed there is no evidence for AGW beyond the tiny 1.2C max. associated with CO2. Whatever is doing the warming that Rahmstorf and claims, it definitely isn’t CO2 related.
Recent forcing papers (post Lindzen) e.g. Stephens et al, Wild et al, seem to be allocating a greater role to aerosols than previously from what I can gather, perhaps #3 after the solar/cloudiness combo. CO2 forcing doesn’t rise above the uncertainty levels on the other hand.
Hi Magoo,
Thanks for taking the time to read the paper. There are a couple of other possibilities that you have overlooked in your analysis.
One is that the temperature measurements of the troposphere are incorrect. If you are prepared to accept that ground surface temperatures are possibly flawed (despite all the evidence to the contrary) then you need to consider that the radiosonde data could be suspect as well.
The other possibility is that there are other forcings at play such as ozone depletion and volcanic aerosol forcing which are not included in the models of tropospheric warming.
Rahmstorf et al demonstrate that once short term noise from known causes is removed the IPCC predictions of global temperature are in good agreement with measured global temperatures so I suspect one of the above two possibilities is more likely than the scenarios you suggest.
>”Rahmstorf et al demonstrate that once short term noise from known causes is removed the IPCC predictions of global temperature are in good agreement with measured global temperatures”
Except that FRC12 uses TAR and AR4 simulations and only since 2000:-
That is not a “good agreement” against observations that have essentially been smoothed similar to FR&C
By 2010 the CMIP5 average is 0.6 C above 1980 level but RFC12 only has 2010 about 0.45 C above 1980 from a vastly different simulation ensemble. The RF&C ensemble simulations only actually start at 2000 and the runs diverge radically from thereon. The ensemble doesn’t even concur as a group from 2000 onwards let alone with the heavily adjusted RF&C series and certainly not with actual measured temperature.
Re CMIP5 vs RSS/UAH Nick. INM-CM4 is right between UAH and RSS on the same flat trajectory (not the RF&C trajectory). It is the only model to achieve that (whether for right or wrong reasons) and also the only model to exhibit positive OLR sensitivity (doesn’t trap energy basically) which may turn out to be the correct rationale and configuration.
Where will that leave Rahmstorf, Foster and Cazenova if other model groups (noting the apparent success) also succeed in mimicing both absolute level and trajectory of simply smoothed observations with revisions that corroborate and validate the INM-CM4 configuration?
Just as a general observation, without drilling down into details, I find this line of argument somewhat unconvincing. The IPCC come up with.a projection, reality does not match it, and somehow they manage to find, out of the hat so to speak, an adjustment that makes their models valid.
Wasn’t it the same guys, the Potsdam ones, that is, who claimed that the cold winters that Europe had recently experienced were caused by global warming?
It’s all very plausible if you also buy into astrology and palm reading, but personally I’d like to see these guys put their money on some future projections and stick with it.
Rahmstorf, Foster, and Cazenave (2012) detrend for solar using PMOD (their detrending is a “novel” and “clever” approach according to SkS).
The following series of papers (there are others) demonstrates the deficiency of relying on PMOD to the exclusion of other TSI datasets and that detrending for solar has been carried out previously with other TSI datasets since 1980 providing explanations for much of planetary warming over that 30 period and also for a longer 50 year period.
Mordinov and Willson 2003 found that PMOD’s straight line in TSI over the last 30 years can be explained by not correcting the ERBE/ERBS data during the ACRIM Gap.
Conclusions
The absence of a minima-to-minima trend in the PMOD composite is an artifact of uncorrected ERBS degradation. ERBS degradation during the gap equals the trend difference and the PMOD offsets (within computational uncertainty).
Scafetta 2009 documents the ERBS discrepency. Most (65-70%) of the warming can be explained with TSI alone over the last 30 years if ACRIM and other TSI measurements are to be right. If PMOD’s dataset were to be right, little attribution would be needed for TSI.
Abstract
The solar contribution to global mean air surface temperature change is analyzed by using an empirical bi-scale climate model characterized by both fast and slow characteristic time responses to solar forcing: 1 = 0.4 ± 0.1 yr, and 2 = 8 ± 2 yr or 2 = 12 ± 3 yr. Since 1980 the solar contribution to climate change is uncertain because of the severe uncertainty of the total solar irradiance satellite composites. The sun may have caused from a slight cooling, if PMOD TSI composite is used, to a significant warming (up to 65% of the total observed warming) if ACRIM, or other TSI composites are used. The model is calibrated only on the empirical 11-year solar cycle signature on the instrumental global surface temperature since 1980. The model reconstructs the major temperature patterns covering 400 years of solar induced temperature changes, as shown in recent paleoclimate global temperature records.
Scafetta and Willson 2009 also documented PMOD’s flaws (supports Wilson 1997) and that the TSI contribution since 1980 could be underestimated
Conclusions
This finding has evident repercussions for climate change and solar physics. Increasing TSI between 1980 and 2000 could have contributed significantly to global warming during the last three decades [Scafetta and West, 2007, 2008]. Current climate models [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007] have assumed that the TSI did not vary significantly during the last 30 years and have therefore underestimated the solar contribution and overestimated the anthropogenic contribution to global warming.
Scafetta and West 2008 found that up to 69% of the warming over the last 50 years can be explained by just TSI alone using the ACRIM dataset. This does not include other natural causes like Cloud Cover decrease, PDO, AMO, Volcanism etc.
Solar cycles
We estimate that the Sun could account for as much as 69% of the increase in Earth’s average temperature, depending on the TSI reconstruction used
The ACRIM website describes the ACRIM – PMOD difference
There are a number of differences between the ACRIM and PMOD composites but the most important is the trend during solar cycles 21 – 23. The absence of a trend in the PMOD composite and any composite based on the ERBS/ERBE ACRIM gap ratio has been shown to be an artifact of uncorrected degradation of ERBE results during the gap (See Fig. 4 linked).
Why are the 1998 El Niño and 2007 La Niña events heavily reduced but the 2010 El Niño actually enhanced (added to)? There is no specific comment on the 2010 event in the paper or on why and how they arrived at a 2010 adjustment that is significantly different to the other ENSO adjustments (apart from their overall linear regression approach).
Adjustment to the 2010 El Niño proportionally similar to RFC12’s adjustment to the 1998 El Niño would place the RFC12 2010 level at the lower bound of the simulations and mean no warming 2006 – 2012. Their entire series would then concur with (be consistent with) Christy’s 7 year smoothing of RSS and UAH here:-
There’s something very dodgy about RFC12’s adjustment to the 2010 El Niño and their treatment of that critical event changes the game completely i.e. their series is inconsistent with the 7 year smoothed series because of that single adjustment.
The 2009/10 event was one of the 7 strongest since 1950:-
Nothing in F&R as to why the 2010 event should be treated any differently than all the other ENSO events.
>”but let me know if it still does not make sense.”
It actually makes sense to a degree. F&R and RF&C are essentially just short-term data smoothing exercises despite the hype but smoothing must retain the characteristics of the data, not modify them. Christy’s 7 year smoothing of RSS and UAH is far more radical by comparison so that he ends up with two series without the fluctuations of RF&C, but the signal is retained in the 7 year smoothing.
The only difference between the respective series (Christy vs FR&C) is the 2010 event. The 7 year smoothing retains the intrinsic trajectory of the data i.e. the 2010 ENSO event is merely smoothed just the same as all the other ENSO events. RF&C for some reason, instead of smoothing as for 1998, 2007 and all the other ENSO activity actually ADD data either side of the 2010 event where there was none previously and the smoothing to the peak is minimal compared to the reductions to the other event peaks – why?
>”I’m happy to run through it with you.”
Please do. Specific to the 2010 event in comparison to other significant events e.g. 1998 and 2007.
If they have managed to detrend the short term noise from the dataset, wouldn’t it be more useful to provide future IPCC projections with the short term noise added in?
Presumably there is some certainty to ENSO etc that they could add back in.
>”Presumably there is some certainty to ENSO etc that they could add back in.”
No certainty or cycle that I know of. There’s general regimes that can be seen in MEI.ext e.g. positive late 1970s to mid 2000s or negative late 1800s to early 1900s but in amongst the general regimes are the opposite departures:-
ENSO can only be added back in retroactively as for volcanism as far as I can tell. Tisdale states in the conclusion of a very long post (as usual):-
“And as shown in Figures 17 and 18, when the linear effects of ENSO are removed from Global Temperature anomalies, the remainder logically shows variations that reflect the opposing effects of ENSO.”
The addition of the sunspot integral to PDO+AMO moves the temp correlation from 0.85 to 0.96. Nice to add in if the number can be predicted but it’s not necessary if if can’t.
TSI provides the long-term warming (or cooling) trend. Information there (page 5) about the relationship between MEI and PDO +Warm Mode and -Cold Mode and the effect on temperatures.
Adding CO2 to PDO+AMO+TSI only moves the correlation from 0.85 to 0.89 (page 8).
That isn’t a paper. It’s a naive regression that any first year statistics student could perform.
It features pre-smoothing of data, inconsistent time periods, limited geographic exposure and conclusions unwarranted from the results. Why are you willing to believe this rubbish over and above more robust analyses such as Rahmstorf et al?
Just realized that “Hoyt” is a TSI proxy, not similar to PMOD or ACRIM type satellite sets. D’Aleo page 4:-
“The Hoyt-Schatten TSI series uses five historical proxies of solar irradiance, including sunspot cycle amplitude, sunspot cycle length, solar equatorial rotation rate, fraction of penumbral spots, and decay rate of the 11-year sunspot cycle. I found a correlation strength (r-squared) of 0.57”
Given the aforementioned difficulty with sunspot prediction, Hoyt-Schatten is not an improvement. I searched around for an improvement and found a recent paper that didn’t make the news to my knowledge:-
Reconstructed Total Solar Irradiance as a precursor for long-term solar activity predictions: a nonlinear dynamics approach
Stefano Sello. May 2012
Mathematical and Physical Models, Enel Research, Pisa – Italy
Fig. 9. HadCRUT3N yearly averaged temperature anomalies behavior (red line); the cycle (10-12 years) averaged (blue line) and predicted values for the next four cycles (green line) using both the TSI predictions and the suggested linear correlation between solar cycle length and the average temperature in the next cycle.
Looks like Dan Pangburn’s model out as far as 2020.
Figure 9 shows the related behavior for predicted HadCRUT3N cycle averaged temperature anomalies. The above result appears coherent with some previous suggestions on the future trend of average temperature anomalies based on solar activity. de Jager and Duhau (2011) conclude that the solar activity is presently going through a short transition period (2000- 2014), which will be followed by a Grand Minimum of the Maunder type, most probably starting in the twenties of the current century. Another prediction, based on reduced solar irradiance due to reduced solar radius, is a sequence of quite lower solar activity cycles leading to a Maunder like minimum starting around 2040 (Abdussamatov, 2007). It is well known that the Maunder Minimum in sunspot numbers in the second half of the seventeenth century coincided with what has become known as the Little Ice Age during which western Europe experienced significantly cooler temperatures. Here we found that, after a significant reduction of the temperature anomalies during the current cycle 24, we could have a pause during the following cycles 25 and 26 with a new average temperature rise (large fluctuations), followed by a significant strong downward of temperature anomalies around 2039-2040 and during the cycle 27.
The conclusions are well worth a read. Sello reckons his technique is good for extrapolation of the next 3 solar cycles.
>”To me it all feels like – if nature doesn’t fit the models, adjust nature.”
Most of the RF&C adjustment is merely smoothing Andy (leaving aside use of PMOD). It’s only the RF&C treatment of the 2010 ENSO event the makes their series any different from Christy’s 7 year running average smoothing.
RF&C have definitely “adjusted nature” around the 2010 event and I’ll be very interested in Nick’s justification because that makes ALL the difference to the data trajectory and renders their series inconsistent with the smoothed RSS and UAH series by Christy.
I don’t subscribe to the use of Hoyt-Schatten for TSI (see up-thread) but the main reasons for PDO+AMO+TSI are:-
1) Correlation with observations (note addition of CO2 only improves correlation by 0.04).
2) Tested predictive capability of ocean oscillations (SOI has been used similarly and successfully by Dr Theodore Landsheidt) and progress on TSI as a predictor as data quality improves.
>”……over and above more robust analyses such as Rahmstorf et al?”
Robust? I think not e.g. PMOD uses uncorrected data and their treatment of the 2010 ENSO event is looking more bogus by the minute. The predictive capability of the RF&C series is not tested yet either. But I understand your need to denigrate a threat to your poster boys and warmist icon at every opportunity Simon.
This isn’t correct. There are corrections but it is the nature of the data used to fill the gap in each composite (result of Challenger disaster) that is in question, 90% interpolated in PMOD.
Point is that there is more than just one TSI composite to apply and consider, PMOD is the one with a negative trend so the likes of Rahmstorf and Foster are prone to exclude any other considerations. It wont be such an issue as it was as time goes on though, now that there is continuity of measurement and corroborating overlap of observations from different platforms.
Hi Richard C,
As requested the explanation for the adjustments to the periods you do not understand follows. The numbers are a bit rough as they are taken from the (fairly low res) graphs rather than the raw data sets but it should be sufficient for your understanding.
The summary is that 2010 is not treated any differently from the other years. Rather you have not understood how the adjusted series is generated. If you still think it is similar to 7 year smoothing then I suggest you read the paper rather than just looking at the pictures.
From fig 7 of Foster and Rahmstorf 2011, Global temperature evolution 1979–2010, the following can be determined:
In 1998 MEI (0.22C) is dominant but AOD (-0.01C) and TSI (-0.01C) pull it back somewhat so total exogenous forcing is 0.2C.
In 1999 the negative influence of MEI (-0.04C) is slightly weaker than TSI (0.05C) so total exogenous forcing is 0.01C.
In 2007 MEI (0.06C) is mostly cancelled by TSI (-0.05C) so total exogenous forcing is 0.01C.
In 2008 the negative influence of MEI (-0.2C) is further reduced by TSI (-0.04C) so total exogenous forcing is -0.24C.
In 2010 MEI (0.07) is dominant but is partly cancelled by TSI (-0.04) so total exogenous forcing is 0.03C.
In 2011 MEI (-0.26) is further reduced by TSI (-0.02) so total exogenous forcing is -0.28C.
This matches what is shown in fig 1 of Rahmstorf et al. 2012 who subtracts the exogenous forcing from the raw temperature record. This demonstrates that the IPCC predictions (which do not include the exogenous forcing) are accurate once these influences are removed from the raw data.
>”Rather you have not understood how the adjusted series is generated. If you still think it is similar to 7 year smoothing then I suggest you read the paper rather than just looking at the pictures.”
You then follow that with the smoothing technique RF&C use. RF&C smooths the data Nick, there is no escaping that, but I’ve got no problem with smoothing (but they also make some data up and that I do have a problem with)).
Four points:
1) RF&C introduce data either side (mostly in the 2010 year) of the measured series peak at 2010 (light red line) where no datapoints existed in the measured data. The datapoints they introduce are derived from MEI (offset by TSI) but the MEI is an index, not measured temperature in degrees Celsius. They cannot simply introduce derived datapoints into a measured temperature series where no datapoints in degrees Celcius existed in the first instance. To do so is simply making up extraneous values, even to the extent of introducing a peak “temperature” in the 2010 year of about +0.37 anomaly when the actual measured temperature is down around +0.2 C.
There’s a similar instance at about 1993/4 on RF&C Figure 1:-
2) The actual 2012 peak reduction is fine by me mathematically but not physically. RF&C reduce the 1998 peak by 0.2 C. The 2010 MEI peak is 50% of the 1998 peak so an MEI-only proportional reduction to 2010 is 0.1 C. RF&C’s reduction after TSI is about 0.03 C, therefore TSI must equate to temperature of 0.07 C. SOHO/VIRGO (PMOD) shows the 1998/2010 difference in W/m2 which is shown as degrees C in the F&R TSI chart:-
The difference is say 0.3 W/m2. The SB law tells us that the Earth’s surface should warm by 1 degree Celsius for every 3.3 Watts per square meter of radiative forcing, therefore 0.3 W/m2 equates to 0.09 C so the actual reduction to the peak is OK mathematically.
But does that TSI radiative forcing translate to measured temperature instantaneously (within a month say) so that the instantaneous offsetting rationale against MEI is valid? I don’t think so and I think this is why the net MEI/TSI/AOD temperature adjustment produces “temperature” where there wasn’t any to start with. The TSI will be absorbed at the earth’s surface especially by the ocean. That energy may take days, weeks, decades or even centuries to be released as heat measurable by temperature at surface. The 0.07 C TSI offset is not necessarily valid in this case. The proportional 0.1 C MEI-only reduction could even be a more valid adjustment.
3) The CMIP5 ensemble average is about 0.6 C higher by 2010 than the 1980 level that coincides with observations:-
That puts the CMIP5 2010 level at 0.5 C anomaly on RF&C Figure 1 and renders Figure 1 either out of date, or plotted incorrectly, or irrelevant, or something.
4) The absolute rise in RF&C Figure 1 1980 – 2010 is about 0.43 C (CMIP5 0.6 C). The alleged CO2 forcing over that period is:
The alleged CO2 forcing overshoots RF&C’s 2010 level by 0.32 C (CMIP5 0.15 C indicating CMIP5 is a better comparison). We could use an at surface figure of 0.2 C (0.75/3.7) as per Hansen (I think) but then the CO2 forcing falls short by 0,23 C (CMIP5 0.4 C).
As always, it is difficult fitting CO2 into the picture.
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In summary, the F&R/RF&C rationale is flawed by the application of a mix of offsetting phenomena (MEI/TSI/AOD) that are not mutually interacting in the instantaneous timeframe in which the net adjustment is derived.
It is not necessary to deconstruct the data by extracting selected phenomena in order to identify the intrinsic signal in the data over time e.g. EMD extracts intermediate mode frequencies (IMFs) that are the decadal and multidecadal oscillations of climate data and a residual which is the overall intrinsic data signal. The HadSST2 EMD residual looks exactly like RF&C Figure 1 from 1980 – 2011:-
It remains for the RF&C approach to be tested over time (just like all the other models).
The key is identifying inflexions in the trajectory of the data. It will only take a few years (maybe 3 or 5) to confirm or otherwise whether the RF&C approach is valid. If the trajectory of a moving average or polynomial say, continues unabated, it will be proved invalid and they’ve missed an inflexion back around 2004 (but Scafetta and INM-CM4 are still in-the-money). If the RF&C Figure 1 trajectory continues, their approach is valid along with the lower CMIP5 STDev limit and everyone else is wrong. If the trajectory turns down, they, the GCM’s and Scafetta are wrong but Sella, Abdusamatov, Pangburn and others are right.
Given that the latest El Niño is a fizzer, the PDO is in cold mode, SST is trending down, there’s not much to support a rise above 2010 level for a while.
An updated RF&C Figure 1 will necessarily drop back down at least 0.2 C from its 2010 level in the absence of an El Niño. And it wont go back up there (let alone above it) unless there is a strong El Niño in the near future.
1) Foster and Rahmstorf 2011 explains how MEI, TSI and AOD indexs are converted into C
2) Foster and Rahmstorf 2011 incorporates process lag for each of the exogenous forcings into the temperature correction. Maybe you could do a little more reading and a little less typing
3) “Or something” is the correct answer, you are mistaken in your calculation
4) That is what the models are for, they are slightly more sophisticated than your estimate.
As for your EMD calculation, why don’t you present it properly, as a pdf say. As it is it can’t actually be read and frankly I can’t be bothered fixing it for you. I’m surprised no one else here has mentioned it.
TSI Figure 1 caption “Warming already committed, but not yet manifest in surface temperature” and “The circled area is (roughly) the solar energy already absorbed by the ocean and yet to manifest itself in global temperatures i.e – warming already committed.”
The Solar Cycle
Because of the ocean’s thermal inertia (it takes a long time to warm up), global temperature change caused by the sun’s variabilty lags solar irradiance by about 18 months. The ‘trough’ in the solar cycle (figure 1) was therefore still exerting a cooling influence on surface temperatures in 2011. However this is expected to quickly change to a warming effect over the next 3-5 years because the sun is on its ascent to the peak of the next cycle. As circled in figure 1 – extra sunlight has gone into the oceans in the last 18 months. This warming is a ‘train that has already left the station’ so-to-speak, and will soon manifest itself in global temperature.
“…the sun is on its ascent to the peak of the next cycle”
Possibly at peak levels late September (same as previous peak level 2003/04):-
“Due to a combination of the warm phase of the solar cycle and an overdue switch to El Niño – when the ocean gives up a lot of heat to the atmosphere, near-future warming is expected.”
Wishful thinking back in February re the El Niño and the current solar warm phase has pushed levels back up to 2003/4 levels in UAH but not RSS. The chances of going higher on TSI power alone are slim now.
1) Foster and Rahmstorf 2011 explains how MEI, TSI and AOD indexs are converted into C
That would be Figure 3 “Coefficients of temperature response to MEI, AOD and TSI i.e. a theoretical response, not a conversion,
TSI power (thats not an index BTW) can be converted to theoretical temperature on an instantaneous basis as I’ve done in my check – no problem, but that is not what happens in the real world. But an offset of one phenomenon to another is another matter entirely in a physical sense when one is in units of power and the other is an index e.g. MEI/TSI. F&R doesn’t justify how the offset process can create data where there was none previously (and they never will be able to do so). Application of a coefficient then net calculation doesn’t turn an index into measured degrees Celsius that can supersede actual measured degrees C.
2) Foster and Rahmstorf 2011 incorporates process lag for each of the exogenous forcings into the temperature correction.
What is the process lag for TSI to temperature? If you mean Table 1, there is 0 lag for TSI from RSS or UAH and 1 month for the other 3. That is hardly process lag. They say:-
“The influence of exogenous factors can have a delayed effect on global temperature. Therefore for each of the three factors we tested all lag values from 0 to 24 months, then selected the lag values which gave the best fit to the data.”
A 0 (RSS,UAH) or 1 month (others) TSI => temperature lag is fanciful over the ocean. It is not called a heat sink for nothing. Also see this comment re SkS article on thermal lag:-
3) “Or something” is the correct answer, you are mistaken in your calculation
Explain how exactly.
4) That is what the models are for, they are slightly more sophisticated than your estimate.
But the FAR/TAR levels in RF&C don’t reconcile with the CMIP5 levels do they? The “estimate” is the IPCC methodology, much closer to CMIP5 than FAR/TAR/RF&C. INM-CM4 is right between RSS and UAH, That would make it the most “sophisticated” wouldn’t it?
>”As for your EMD calculation, why don’t you present it properly, as a pdf say. As it is it can’t actually be read and frankly I can’t be bothered fixing it for you”
The Dropbox link to Excel workbook works fine for me, what’s the problem? EMD software I used here:-
>”…but that is not what happens in the real world”
RF&C’s 0 thermal lag over the ocean (RSS/UAH) implies that the TSI energy laid down over the tracklength of a photon plunging several metres vertically into the tropical ocean is instantly manifest as heat about 1km above the surface that can be immediately detected by a satellite-borne sensor passing overhead. I don’t think so. If that were the case there would be no OHC buildup, no El Niños, no oceanic heat sink, no oceanic heat transport mechanisms bringing warm tropical water down around New Zealand or transporting warm water poleward, and no SST rise.
The only TSI energy instantly available to the atmosphere is radiation reflection and scattering from the surface. Re-emission occurs diurnally. Conduction/convection and evaporation from near-surface follows in hours, days and maybe weeks. The bulk of the energy sequestered deeper down (most of that happens in the tropical zone) stays resident in the mixed layer above the planetary boundary for some indeterminate time (weeks/months/years/decades?) before dissipating maybe by El Niño. Some heat is taken down and moved vast distances over long timeframes (decades or more) by currents before dissipating, again maybe at the surface by El Niño, maybe to extratropical, subpolar or polar regions.
The entire TSI departure from a norm cannot be used as an instantaneous factor (0 or even 1 month lag) because the ocean response is by no means instant no matter what they’ve arrived at statistically. Foster and Rahmstorf have not thought this through.
An alternative approach to RF&C 2012 is to accept without question that the technique is all kosher and that we have a model from which to project from after the 2010+ levels where the series leaves off. Fine, we’ll work from there.
If CO2 is the phenomenon that drives temperature up on the trajectory of RF&C Figure 1 (observations AND simulations) then the level of temperature will continue to rise above the level where the Figure 1 series ends because all other exogenous phenomena are accounted for.
But since 2010 by whatever measurement method – HatAT2 (radiosondes), RSS/UAH (satellites), GISTEMP/HadCRUT (thermometers) – temperatures have fallen down and away from RF&C 2010 levels now that the one major exogenous phenomenon (ENSO) is all but neutral (no adjustment reqd) and another (TSI) looks to be at peak levels (no adjustment either because TSI at peak is close to their 0 TSI anomaly)
RF&C cannot hope for the biggest El Niño the world has ever seen to raise current levels above the end of their series because that effect will have to be removed given their rationale. CO2 hasn’t pushed the level higher. All indications (e.g. PDO) are for a cool period from now out to 2020 or so.
On reflection, El Niño is not an exogenous phenomenon. It is an accumulation of solar energy from earlier timeframes that is released in one big dollop. Therefore it should not be removed from the series. The smearing of it along the previous 7 previous years by running average for smoothing purposes is a better representation of the event because a large part of the El Niño energy is allocated (roughly) to the period in which it originated.
Noise? Since 2010 (i.e. at this juncture in 2012), no ENSO adjustment required, no TSI adjustment required, no AOD adjustment required – in short – no noise (in RF&C’s erroneous terms). What we have before us now in late 2012 is a noiseless level of temperature as defined by RF&C and the anomalies of the “exogenous” factors they’ve used.
But RF&C don’t understand oceanic thermal lag (Rob Painting at SKS does on the other hand). They don’t understand the atmospheric response to TSI via the ocean, neither do they understand El Niño. Consequently, they’ve erroneously defined exogenous factors and “noise” thereby missing an intermediate inflexion that a running average uncovers.
RF&C could have achieved a similar result simply by applying a linear regressed trend to the entire dataset sans exogenous adjustments. Everyone already knows the rising linear trend of temperature series 1980 – present (think NZ7SS and NZCSET v NIWA squabble over rising linear trend – they’re not squabbling over linear rise, but just over the slope). RF&C have done nothing “novel” or “clever” (as Cook or whoever puts it at SKS) by establishing a linear trend (EMD achieves that too).
But by erroneously eliminating the shoulder of data around the turn of the century and being fixated with the overall linear aspect they’ve missed a vital intermediate inflexion in the data. That inflexion is glaringly evident in SST data by use of trends which better represent the data e.g. polynomial. Over time, that inflexion will pull down the long-term linear trend as it is doing with SSL and SST. Tisdale has made an SST data-model comparison here:-
‘Model-Data Comparison: Pacific Ocean Satellite-Era Sea Surface Temperature Anomalies’
Just as with RF&C Figure 1 there is a discrepancy – data vs models (RF&C “data” same as models) – late 2012. The absolute level of CMIP5 and RF&C (assuming their series keeps rising as a result of supposed CO2 forcing) at end of 2012 is imaginary – the data does NOT exist in reality.
If you wish to characterize model output and erroneously invented values as valid data and actual data unaffected by any significant anomalous events as “noise” then I suggest that it is you that is afflicted by delusion Nick – not I.
>”Even the CMIP5 ensemble looks to have mimiced the 2003/04 inflexion in the Pacific SST data”
And in the atmosphere, there are at least 2 model runs in amongst the spaghetti of Christy’s EPW plot that have mimiced the inflexion and are on the same flat (even fractionally negative) trajectory as the observations along to 2010 but at a higher absolute level:-
Add to that Christy’s EPS Figure 2.1 update plot in which INM-CM4 mimics the inflexion, trajectory and absolute level of the observations. There may even be another updated run in the EPS plot (hard to see) that turns at the inflexion and is on the trajectory but is at a higher absolute level making 3 or 4 models that mimic the inflexion and trajectory of observations 2004 – 2010 (Figure 2.1, page 19):-
How naive of Richard C to think that the RF&C analysis has removed all the noise. In fact if he had bothered to read the abstract of Foster and Rahmstorf 2011 he might have noted that they said “…the global warming signal becomes even more evident as noise is reduced.” Not eliminated as he seems to believe.
Additionally in the body of Foster and Rahmstorf 2011 they state “The full model explains 70%–80% of the variance for all five data sets” not all of it, which further demonstrates his folly.
He does make one valid point when he says that the authors could treat the lag more realistically. However what they have done is demonstrably better than using unadjusted temperature data and it is not clear that a more realistic treatment would be worth the additional complexity. Perhaps a subsequent paper will address this and incrementally improve the result. That would be how science works.
The fact remains that the IPCC projections from 2001 and 2007 for global temperatures have been proven to be remarkable accurate once exogenous factors are removed from the temperature data set.
>”The fact remains that the IPCC projections from 2001 and 2007 for global temperatures have been proven to be remarkable accurate once exogenous factors are removed from the temperature data set.”
Yes, FAR, TAR, out of date data sets, made up “data”, and fallacious rationales are great for gullible folks who live in the past as you appear to Nick. Unfortunately, subsequent CMIP5 runs and late 2012 observed temperature updates disprove what RF&C have previously “proven” (according to you). Some of the models (at least 3, maybe 4) have improved considerably since CMIP3 (2007) to the extent of mimicing observed temperature trajectory in GAT and SST (a flat trajectory since 2003/04) as pointed out here:-
Models, rather than “remove” RF&C’s “exogenous” factors actually account for TSI and El Niño. They don’t mimic the El Niño fluctuation that releases energy in one short time span but they do account for the energy input from solar that contributes to it and they release it over a broader span. That is why a 7 year running mean of observed temperature provides an (almost) apples-to-apples comparison of models to observations and El Niño energy should be left in the series, not taken out as F&R/RF&C do i.e. El Niño is not an “exogenous” factor.
Same for TSI by model use of a solar “constant” that normally would represent the peaks and troughs of TSI because the ocean modulates the fluctuating solar input anyway and there is no instantaneous atmospheric response to TSI over the ocean as RF&C would have us believe (and as you in your naivety appear to Nick).
Unfortunately (again), the sun is not playing by modelers rules. The latest peak in TSI looks unlikely to reach the 2000 levels of the VIRGO series here (fractionally below RF&C’s 0 anomaly baseline at present):-
SSNs are similarly not reaching the predicted peak. Therefore the solar “constant” is no longer valid and will have to be adjusted as Lean and others do periodically. This means that there will not be as much energy in the oceanic heat sink (lagged heat) to sustain future temperatures (“warming” as Rob Painting puts it at SKS) and we are seeing the early stages of the solar recession predicted by astrophysics. It also means that all IPCC GCM simulations to date will have used an invalid solar constant for at least the next 30 yrs and probably out to 2100.
And rather than be an instantaneous manifestation in atmospheric temperature, that present lower level of TSI peak will not translate to atmospheric temperature for some time, maybe end of 2013 (no El Niño predicted for 2013) or sometime in 2014. Because TSI is “real” power (in electrical terms) i.e. higher intensity, frequency and energy-per-photon as opposed to the “apparent” power of CO2 LWIR (lower intensity, frequency and energy-per-photon) there wont be an offset from rising CO2 and there will be less re-emitted solar energy available to be intercepted by CO2 anyway.
So rather than a global “warming” signal being evident as you content Nick, it is a global cooling signal that is emerging. Foster and Rahmstorf miss that signal completely of course
If by this statement you are alluding to significant factors that F&R have neglected to consider e.g. cloud forcing, then perhaps you could present a synopsis of the comparative effect of that forcing (W/m2 comparisons) over the last 30 yrs with particular attention to each decade Nick?
With recourse to relevant and up to date papers and reports of course.
As mentioned before Nick, if Rahmstorf is correct then he undermines the AGW hypothesis further due to the fact that the discrepancy between what was predicted and what is observed is even worse. A surface temperature that is rising faster than the upper troposphere proves there is no positive feedback from water vapour, and if Rahmstorf says the surface is rising even faster then it only reinforces and strengthens the fact.
Over 30,000,000 radiosondes and 2 satellites reinforce the empirical truth, & all you have to do to believe in AGW is ignore all three corroborating lines of evidence in favour of unfounded and empirically disproved speculation.
I don’t know why you pro AGW guys keep going on about AGW when the lack of a hot spot stops your theory in it’s tracks, perhaps it’s just easier to ignore the inconvenient. Everything else fails without it as there is no proof that the warming has anything to do with mankind’s emissions except for the 1.2C max. per doubling of total atmospheric CO2 levels. Especially when the temperature rise bears no difference to previous records that is supposed to be natural.
From 2000 onwards, the Max, Min and 11 year cycle length is assumed to continue unabated from late 1980s level. Already by late 2012 that is not playing out.
SC 24 could extend to 17 years long ending in 2024, leaving 12.5 years of cooling from mid-2013. Some of the more radical solar predictions are for grand minimum conditions. Viera et al 2011 reconstructed Holocene TSI finding about 1.5 W.m2 min to max. The 2000 peak was near max levels so the extent of possible reduced TSI expectation should not exclude 1 W.m2.
Sun Headed Into Hibernation, Solar Studies Predict
There was some alarmist stuff on TV3 last night about the melting Antartica which apparently is worse than we thought,featuring some of the usual suspects. The residents of Dunedin are worried about sea level rise.
My 12 year old son, who knows how to wind me up, says “we need to build more wind farms Dad”
Temperatures were higher than present back in the early 80s [decrease over past 30 years] so that’s not the agent unless it is just a generally higher temperature regime than say 200 – 500 years ago or whatever. Quoting from the article:-
“Satellite measurements [GRACE] have confirmed Antarctica is losing land-bound ice to climate change, ending years of uncertainty.”
Then I read of the Harig and Simons paper reported at WUWT ‘More on noisy Greenland ice loss data from GRACE’:-
The researchers tested their method on GRACE data for Greenland recorded from 2003 to 2010 and brought the complexities of the island’s glaciers into clearer focus. While overall ice loss on Greenland consistently increased between 2003 and 2010, Harig and Simons found that it was in fact very patchy from region to region.
In addition, the enhanced detail of where and how much ice melted allowed the researchers to estimate that the annual acceleration in ice loss is much lower than previous research has suggested, roughly increasing by 8 billion tons every year. Previous estimates were as high as 30 billion tons more per year.
“GRACE data is notoriously noisy and spatially spread out, and this has resulted in ‘ad hoc’ methods for processing mass changes of Earth’s ice sheets that have wildly different values,” said MacAyeal, who is familiar with the Princeton work but had no role in it.
“In other words, each particular investigator ends up getting a different individual number for the net change in mass,” he said. “What this research does is figure out a way to be more thoughtful and purposeful about exactly how to deal with GRACE’s notorieties. This method would allow researchers to standardize a bit more and also to understand more precisely where they are, and where they are not, able to resolve ice changes.”
As expected, ice loss occurred in the lower, warmer coastal areas — as opposed to the higher and colder interior, which gained ice mass — but the melt was concentrated on the southeast and northwest coasts for most of the period studied. Indeed, many coastal areas showed no ice-mass loss, while the ice sheet on the southwest coast actually thickened slightly from 2003 to 2006.
But these trends were more complex when Harig and Simons got into the details. Surprisingly, the location of the greatest melt activity migrated around the island, shifting from the southeast to the northwest coast in just a few years. Ice loss on the southeast coast built up starting in 2003 and hit a highpoint in 2007. In 2008, loss on this coast began to recede and shift toward the northwest coast; by 2010, the southeast coast displayed only minor ice loss, while nearly the entire western coast exhibited the most severe melt. During this transition, melt also receded then picked up again on the northeastern coast with seemingly little overlap with activity elsewhere.
[…]
“Scientists are not totally sure what the driving force of the melt on Greenland is on short, yearly timescales,” Harig said. “There is no certainty about which outside factor is the most important or if all of them contribute. Being able to compare what is happening regionally to field observations from other researchers of what a glacier is doing helps us figure out what is causing all this melt.”
# # #
The Harig and Simons technique is completely new so it is unlikely that Shepherd et al employed it in their GRACE study rendering the Shepherd et al findings of a temporary nature. The “driving force” attribution will be equally unclear to the Greenland study even if the technique ever is employed and confirms Shepherd et al (that’s not a given either). Basically there is nothing from Shepherd et al to finger an anthro cause so although it is “a milestone study”, co-author Professor Matt King’s gushing (“the importance of this work should not be understated”) is perhaps a little premature.
Shepherd not Sheppard Andy, Curiously there’s an accompanying review article in the same November Science journal volume (bottom of page) that the media is not so enthusiastic about. Also reported in this Science Daily article:-
I. Joughin, R. B. Alley, D. M. Holland. Ice-Sheet Response to Oceanic Forcing. Science, 2012; 338 (6111): 1172 DOI: 10.1126/science.1226481
Abstract
The ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica are losing ice at accelerating rates, much of which is a response to oceanic forcing, especially of the floating ice shelves. Recent observations establish a clear correspondence between the increased delivery of oceanic heat to the ice-sheet margin and increased ice loss. In Antarctica, most of these processes are reasonably well understood but have not been rigorously quantified. In Greenland, an understanding of the processes by which warmer ocean temperatures drive the observed retreat remains elusive. Experiments designed to identify the relevant processes are confounded by the logistical difficulties of instrumenting ice-choked fjords with actively calving glaciers. For both ice sheets, multiple challenges remain before the fully coupled ice-ocean-atmosphere models needed for rigorous sea-level projection are available.
I suspect that part of the story (oceanic forcing) along with the Harig and Simons finding will be kept very quiet given that it can’t be made to fit the anthropogenic CO2 forcing meme.
Harig:-
“From 2003 to 2010, Greenland overall lost roughly 200 billion tons of ice each year, but glacier activity was regionally inconsistent. Ice loss was concentrated on the southeast and northwest coasts for most of the period, but the area of greatest melt activity began to migrate from the southeast to the northwest coast around 2008. By 2010, the southeast coast displayed only minor ice loss. Meanwhile, the higher and colder interior gained ice mass, as did the southwest coast, slightly, from 2003 to 2006”.
>”I am interested to know how we reconcile the apparent loss in land ice with the increase in sea ice in Antarctica”
This NIWA paper was recently in the news Andy (paywalled):-
‘Atmospheric Forcing of Antarctic Sea Ice on Intraseasonal Time Scales’
James A. Renwick, Alison Kohout, and Sam Dean (2012)
NIWA, Wellington, New Zealand
Abstract
Intraseasonal relationships between Antarctic sea ice and atmospheric circulation have been investigated using a 29-yr record of pentad-mean Antarctic sea ice concentration and Southern Hemisphere 500-hPa height fields. Analyses were carried out for four sea ice seasons: minimum extent, growth, maximum extent, and decay. Interannual variability was removed from both datasets to focus on intraseasonal variations. Patterns of sea ice variability and linkages to the atmospheric circulation varied markedly with season. The strongest and most coherent relationships were evident during the maximum ice extent period and to a lesser degree during the growth period. At those times of year, the strongest relationships were associated with atmospheric circulation anomalies leading sea ice anomalies by 4 or 5 days, suggesting that variations in the atmospheric circulation force changes in the sea ice field. Ice decreases are generally found in regions of poleward flow and ice increases are found in regions of equatorward flow. Mechanisms appear to be related both to thermal advection and to mechanical forcing, with the relative importance of each varying in space and in time. During the period of maximum ice extent, the leading pattern from a maximum covariance analysis between 500-hPa height and sea ice concentration accounted for 38% of the squared covariance between fields, and the associated time series were correlated at 0.74. The leading patterns of variability exhibit clear zonal wavenumber 3 signatures and appear to be largely a result of internal variability in the extratropical circulation.
One study atmospheric forcing (NIWA), the other oceanic forcing (as with Joughin, Alley, and Holland – Greenland). Neither really reconciles your question but the NIWA explanation offers more in terms of Antarctic sea ice I think.
Basically, any analysis – as with Harig and Simons – must break down into a number of seasonal and regional micro studies to really get to grips with what is happening. Renwick, Kohout, and Dean appear to have done that with sea ice but I don’t think Stephens et al have done a seasonal/regional exercise with the land ice mass although I’ll have to check once I get access to the full paper.
Then it remains to see how the sea ice changes relate to land ice mass changes in seasonal/regional micro studies (e.g. Greenland interior gaining mass). That would be the best reconciliation I can think of.
I met some people last night who live off grid in the countryside near here. They have a diesel generator plus $40,000 worth of solar PV panels. Unfortunately a recent electrical storm seems to have blown the system. Not only that, but a neighbor of theirs with $20,000 worth of PV also suffered the same fate.
I don’t know if these were insured or are repairable. Not a good outcome at all.
Climate change is a scientific fact. It’s not a philosophy, it’s not a political statement. The overwhelming majority of climate scientists around the world say our climate is dangerously changing and humans are contributing to that change. Those who deny the scientific reality are often uninformed, in the pocket of Big Pollution, or lost in the conspiratorial fringe twilight.
While I am not a political animal, I am always deeply interested in politics and was very amused by the spectacle one D Cunliffe made of himself at his party’s annual conference. I was interested to hear of the almost-immediate lift in the Labour leader’s post-conference popularity/profile as a result of Cunliffe being put back in his box!
Following your link, I note that the same D Cunliffe takes the same line as Hansen over climate change and the unborn generations to come, which has cancelled any credibility he may have had for me. Reading the comments on that thread makes it clear that Helen’s legacy in Wellingtonograd is alive and well.
Should anyone reading this suspect I am a fan of Mr Key, please divest yourself of that notion immediately. I have seen politicians come and politicians go over many years and I suspect Mr Key regards himself sufficiently highly to not need any support from me.
When I was a teenager, my Dad warned me not take anyone seriously who wanted my vote as there was obviously something wrong with him/her.
And isn’t it lovely without Brandoch and his ilk bombing this thread with their nonsense?
I think the “borrowing from our children” phrase could also be applied to Quantitative Easing, a monetary technique favoured by Russel Norman, of the Greens
Andy Says:
December 3, 2012 at 3:20 pm
I think the “borrowing from our children” phrase could also be applied to Quantitative Easing, a monetary technique favoured by Russel Norman, of the Greens
We all know that this (QE) is debasement of our currency. But it is stealing from the present savers. Fortunately the banks in N.Z. are not guilty of the excesses of their American and British counterparts. The finance companies here bore the brunt of that and they are gone the way the British and American banks (should) go. This or at least face up to the responsibilities of their present ‘off the balance sheet’ and hidden debt. I prefer John Key’s more measured approach on this but we are in troublesome times that no one wants or probably knows how, to confront.
And
o Alexander K says:
December 3, 2012 at 3:14 pm
Alaxander K And isn’t it lovely without Brandoch and his ilk bombing this thread with their nonsense?
Yes. I invited him politely to leave earlier but of course he needed a shove.
I am puzzled, Andy, as to why the world in general thinks the awful Mugabe is even crazier when he has money printed in large quantities, but when Greens and other political groupings support the idea, the practice is suddenly renamed ‘quantitive easing’ and becomes theoretically different in every way. ‘Quantative Easing is actually stealing from my pension fund and that annoys me more than somewhat!
I too look forward to reading Bruce’s rebuttal letter in ‘North and South’, but I don’t expect any MSM journalist to think differently from the Establishment. It takes guts and some intellect to think for oneself. The best we can hope for is that Global Warming (or whatever it’s name of the day is) will just fade away as a topic, as journalists do not like admitting mistakes.
The false science of eugenics also just faded away. It was all the fashion in the early 20th century. All the major science establishments, politicians, etc were onboard with this. There was a “consensus”. Then came WW2, the Germans took eugenics to the extreme, and after the war it was quietly forgotten about.
I don’t know if any of you have seen the editorial in the latest North & South; it is an ugly Lewandowsky-esk attack on climate sceptics as being conspiracy-believing nutters, who should be ignored. I wrote them a letter in rebuttal which they have confirmed they are going to publish – a bit nervous about it as I’m not a brain-box like you fellas, I just know pernicious BS when I read it!
Let me try to explain better why carbon dioxide has no effect …
The process of diffusion in the vertical direction in a gravitational field effectively turns a “level base” into a “sloping base” like a concrete driveway running down a hillside.
This diffusion process ensures that the sum of the PE and KE of individual molecules has a propensity towards equality in all molecules at all altitudes. Those lower down (with less PE) thus have higher KE, leading to higher temperature in the lower regions.
There will be some absorption of Solar insolation at all levels in the Venus atmosphere, because we know at least some gets through to the surface. Think of this absorption as being like lots of different size loads of sand dumped on that sloping driveway. In general, the piles will be smaller as you go towards the top. So there’s no real propensity for convection rising in the atmosphere (sand from higher piles flowing down through the bigger piles further down the slope) so what happens is simply that the amount of radiation varies at different levels to get rid of the sand. But it stops when it gets down to the concrete driveway. The mean amount of radiation has to equate with the incident radiation, so this requirement (long ago) set the level of the driveway, but not its gradient – gravity and the specific heat of the gas set the gradient.
Now I know that some radiation (roughly half) is directed towards the hotter surface, but those who understand what Prof Johnson proved, will realise that the electro-magnetic energy in such radiation is never converted to thermal energy in a hotter region than that from whence it came. Instead it is immediately re-emitted, just as if “pseudo scattered.” Hence the energy in all radiation from the atmosphere always ends up eventually getting to space, even if it strikes the surface, or gets partly absorbed by cooler gas and subsequently re-emitted.
So the diffusion process in a gravitational field sets the gradient of the temperature plot in the atmosphere, with some small variation depending on the specific heat of the gases. The incident Solar radiative flux sets the overall level. These combine to produce a sloping, near linear temperature plot which of course intercepts the surface at a temperature which is determined by the input factors just mentioned, and nothing else.
Any additional absorption of either incident or upwelling radiation merely adds temporary energy which will be quickly radiated away and, even though such radiation is in all directions, it will eventually transfer energy out of the planetary system and back to space.
Venus is a good example, because it is so much more obvious that the surface is not heated to the temperature it reaches by the direct Solar radiation it absorbs. Instead, an interplay of conduction (diffusion) and radiation at the surface/atmosphere interface keeps the surface at a temperature close to that of the base of the atmosphere.
Which came first – the chicken or the egg? The temperature of the base of the atmosphere must have come first because otherwise it would be just too much of a coincidence that the same formula “works” on all planets with sufficient atmospheres.
So, if you don’t accept the above, then please explain in a similar level of detail, exactly what you think explains the surface temperature, being sure to keep within the confines of the laws of thermodynamics and atmospheric physics, as I have.
I decided to keep an eye out at SkS for Ari Jokimäki’s ‘New research from last week’ to see if ‘Global and diffuse solar radiation in Spain: Building a homogeneous dataset and assessing their trends’ – Sanchez-Lorenzo et al. (2012) was listed. It was (third down):-
U.N. Agency Says 2012 Celebrities Hottest On Record
HELSINKI—In a report released Thursday at the United Nations pop culture summit in Finland, a consortium of leading entertainment scientists confirmed that the year 2012 has witnessed the hottest celebrities in recorded history.
Citing evidence such as dangerously hot celebrity beach bodies, steadily rising chemistry between sizzling-hot megastars, and a myriad of extreme, record-breaking blockbuster movie events, the U.N. group claimed the overall hotness of celebrities worldwide is increasing at a staggering rate, with many specific celebrities reported to be “so on fire right now it’s scary.”
“We are seeing an unmistakable pattern: Celebrities across the world are extremely hot, and they are only getting hotter,” said U.N. entertainment agency director Michael Carver, who confirmed that 2012’s celebrities were more gorgeous and charming than those in any year since data on hotness was first collected in 1955. “The chance that natural variability produced such an unprecedented slew of good-looking superstars is vanishingly small.”
Yet the same people who made this video are probably quite happy for Exxon and others to pay them for climate research,and to fly to Doha business class
I’d like to give a shout-out to fellow NZ blogger “New Zealand Climate Change” who has been writing a bit about 28-gate
http://newzealandclimatechange.wordpress.com/2012/11/21/bbc-and-28gate-follow-up/#comments
Unfortunately, the standard of the comments isn’t much better there either (should we give equal time to creationists, etc)
Thanks for the link, Andy.
No problem.good to see a few of the usual suspects turning up too.
“Dendros stick it to the Mann”
A group of Dendrochronologists is upset at Mike Mann’s shoddy dendro paper in Nature Geoscience last February. They have managed to get a rebuttal published. One of the authors of the rebuttal is none other than Keith Briffa.
Buy popcorn folks!
I just created a Tumblr site
http://windmad.tumblr.com/
where I intend to post pictures of wind turbines.
If you have any, please send them in.
Hi guys, while ago I read a research paper which discussed how wind turbine noise causes problems to people. Can’t find it now. Does anyone remember it and have a link?
Thanks
Hi David
Try this
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2012/11/4/ill-wind.html?currentPage=2
Thanks Andy. I wonder whether Gareth Hughes thinks the “precautionary principle ” should be applied to turbines because of this and a moratorium placed on building any more . At the least I would have thought that Windflow Technology should advise the Stock Exchange of this massive risk to their business and suspend all trading of shares. 🙂
Well, the windies try to keep it quiet because any threat of litigation (particularly in the US) would seriously impede their business, especially with regard to the 2km setback rule proposed for the UK (see my site and count how many are closer than 2km)
I’ve had bit to do with measuring sound and vibration from wind farms (Even edited a book on it for the 2010 Tararua wind farm hearing.) and there is, indeed, growing evidence that the low-frequency sound and infrasound can cause lots of problems. (directly stimulates the cochlea, triggers the flight-or-flight response, and the semi-circular canals causing dizziness and nausea)
Trouble is that the acousticians paid by the wind companies (I.e. most of them) take the approach that “if you can’t hear it, it can’t harm you.” Try applying THAT logic to radioactivity and see where it gets you. All sound measurements used to determine compliance use the A-weighting curve that virtually ignores anything below 20 Hz.
Add to that the fact that they only use 10-minute averages and you can ignore the amplitude modulation that produces the swish-swish-swish noise and the so-called rumble-thump when you get a wind gust. Put it all together and you find that many people close to wind farms (some as far as 10 km away) are driven to distraction. In fact, given the lack of sleep that ensues, some become mentally unstable. I’ve seen it.
Have a look on the web for the film “Pandora’s Pinwheels” for some first-hand descriptions. (That’s a plug since I feature in there briefly.)
Thanks Huub, that is really good information.
There seems to be an increasingly large body of evidence that low frequency modulation from wind turbines is causing health issues.
I keep hearing the same story: it sounds like a tumble-drier in my room, I need to sleep in the basement, I need to move away from my home just to get sleep, etc.
I don’t believe all these stories are made up. I had recent experience from a neighbour’s heat pump that caused me sleepless nights. The noise was not discernible during the day, but at night the walls had a low frequency rattle that prevented sleep, even with ear-plugs
We resolved the issue by swapping round the bedroom arrangement in our house
People may belitle these issues, but it is like persistent back pain. Unless you have experienced it, you don;t realise how bad it is
As I watched your documentary Huub, which I found very interesting (I had no idea of this detrimental effect of wind farms), the thought occurred to me that yet again the greenies have been hijacked by big business. What would they say if they found out that wind farms adversely affect the flora and fauna of which they are so protective? I would imagine that even off-shore wind farms would have a vibrational effect on marine life.
Mike, if you watch the Lost Horizons film, which is mainly about the so-called Atlantic Array, they claim that the development will completely destroy the North Devon fishing industry, which has been fishing sustainably in the area for generations.
Given that they will place massive concrete piles on the sea bed over a period of years, I have no reasons to doubt that they are right.
Furthermore, this area has populations of dolphins etc that will be impacted adversely
What I got from the doco was that these wind turbines have low-frequency pulses with extremely long wavelengths. These travel a long way in our atmosphere. Even further in the oceans. They can have the effect of setting up resonant harmonics within a building or other hollow-cavity structure. They apparently have physiological effects too. Perhaps a resonance within certain skulls, causing headaches, nausea and dizziness. So, maybe the dolphins, poster child of ocean health, will experience some health problems from these offshore behemoths. Which is very speculative on my part. Maybe I can get a grant to do some research. Or more likely, Huub will point out the errors in my theory.
By the way, I don’t think the Green movement has been hijacked by business, because that was what it was all about in the first place.
The suckers who vote for them are just that
Read this rather harrowing story of the residents of Waterloo,SA, whose town has been wrecked by wind farm development
http://epaw.org/echoes.php?lang=en&article=n100
There are videos on this website showing the effects of infrasound on the residents of Waterloo
http://nzwindfarms.wordpress.com/
Many years ago I worked with a newly-retired very senior Air Force aircraft engineer. He insisted low-frequency sound was really bad for the health of any animals, including humans, and despite driving a very quiet and somewhat luxurious car (a 6-cylinder Rolls-engined BMC thingy) he and his wife always wore very large headsets with built-in intercom system when they travelled any distance. They reckoned that blanking out as much low-frequency noise from the chassis and tyres as possible translated into remaining fresh and mentally sharp for hours on the road.
Also, I once lived a couple of miles from a very successful helicopter-pilot training establishment; the noise from learners practising ‘auto-rotations’ on a still night for hours on end was dementia-inducing. Engine noise was no problem but the sounds of the rotary wings thumping the air was appalling.
When we received a good offer for that property we couldn’t get rid of it quickly enough.
Re noise from windfarms.
My experience with Canadian windfarms was that they were quiet, but I was just wandering around them during the day. I have thought that the jet lag and car lag I used to get was related to the constant, low-frequency rumble in aircraft and cars. Same in long-distance, diesel buses. Trains, not so much.
I’ve spent weeks in Atco trailers parked beside drilling rigs. The noise is constant, a rumble. Sleeping is hard, but that could be because the drilling and generators regularly change, and also because rig hands drop bags of samples through a special sample door regularly through the night. But the low level noise really gets to you. You have to get away, get some quiet.
I also spent months on the Arctic tundra, sleeping in tents. The wind can go on for days, bad enough to ground aircraft, including helicopters. The sound rolls around your head whichever way you turn. All you want is some place quiet to go to.
So I know that constant noise, particularly low frequency, can drive you crazy, ruin your sleep and leave you unable to concentrate or be peaceful. But that was always for something I could hear.
What is the wind turbine problem? Conscious or unconscious noise?
There was a video from TV3 (NZ) at this link
http://www.3news.co.nz/Makara-residents-fuming-over-noisy-wind-farm/tabid/367/articleID/115226/Default.aspx
Unfortunately, the video has been removed but the comments are worth reading.
NOW FOR A REALITY BREAK:
GENEVA/DOHA, 28 November 2012 (WMO) – The years 2001–2011 were all among the warmest on record, and, according to the World Meteorological Organization, the first ten months indicate that 2012 will most likely be no exception despite the cooling influence of La Niña early in the year.
WMO’s provisional annual statement on the state of the global climate also highlighted the unprecedented melt of the Arctic sea ice and multiple weather and climate extremes which affected many parts of the world. It was released today to inform negotiators at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Doha, Qatar.
January-October 2012 has been the ninth warmest such period since records began in 1850. The global land and ocean surface temperature for the period was about 0.45°C (0.81°F) above the corresponding 1961–1990 average of 14.2°C, according to the statement.
The year began with a weak-to-moderate strength La Niña, which had developed in October 2011. The presence of a La Niña during the start of a year tends to have a cooling influence on global temperatures, and this year was no different. After the end of the La Niña in April 2012, the global land and ocean temperatures rose increasingly above the long-term average with each consecutive month. The six-month average of May–October 2012 was among the four warmest such periods on record.
“Naturally occurring climate variability due to phenomena such as El Niño and La Niña impact on temperatures and precipitation on a seasonal to annual scale. But they do not alter the underlying long-term trend of rising temperatures due to climate change as a result of human activities,” said WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud.
“The extent of Arctic sea ice reached a new record low. The alarming rate of its melt this year highlighted the far-reaching changes taking place on Earth’s oceans and biosphere. Climate change is taking place before our eyes and will continue to do so as a result of the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which have risen constantly and again reached new records,” added Mr Jarraud.
The Arctic reached its lowest annual sea ice extent since the start of satellite records on 16 September at 3.41 million square kilometers. This was 18% less than the previous record low of 18 September, 2007. The 2012 minimum extent was 49 percent or nearly 3.3 million square kilometers (nearly the size of India) below the 1979–2000 average minimum. Some 11.83 million square kilometers of Arctic ice melted between March and September 2012.
WMO will release a 10-year report on the state of the climate, “2001-2010, A Decade of Extremes” on 4 December 2012. It was produced in partnership with other United Nations and international agencies and highlights the warming trend for the entire planet, its continents and oceans during the past decade, with an indication of its impacts on health, food security and socio-economic development.
http://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/pr_966_en.html
Yawn. Must be COP time again.
‘rising temperatures due to climate change as a result of human activities’
Yes, a minute maximum of 1.2C warming for every doubling of CO2. I wonder how many hundreds of years before the CO2 levels double again – 200, 300, 400, 1000?
Lucky for everyone there’s no positive feedback from water vapour isn’t it Brandoch.
Daha on Doha. Has a certain ring to it
Come on, lads, you can do better than this. Does anyone have the time to properly refute some of the statements in the press release, or to point out where logic has failed them?
Magoo was on the right track, although there’s a big difference between observing warming and identifying the cause.
Richard T:
The problem is, Richard, that it’s just the same old nonsense and half-truths all over again.
However, let me try to fix their press release for them.
GENEVA/DOHA, 28 November 2012 (WMO) – The years 2001–2011 were all among the warmest on record since the low point at the end of the Little Ice Age. Before that, during the MWP, RWP and Minoan WP temperatures were higher, and this was due purely to natural variability. According to the World Meteorological Organization, the first ten months indicate that 2012 will most likely be no exception despite the cooling influence of La Niña early in the year. It is noted, however, that 2012 will most likely not turn out to be a record warm year, and will be well below the expected temperatures as predicted by the SRES series of model runs using the A1B scenario.
WMO’s provisional annual statement on the state of the global climate also highlighted the unprecedented melt of the Arctic sea ice and multiple weather and climate extremes which affected many parts of the world. It was released today to inform negotiators at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Doha, Qatar. Also noted was the unprecedented high freeze of the Antarctic sea ice which occurred at the same time, and that none of the climate extremes seen this year were in any way unusual, based on over a hundred years of records. In fact, the year was very average, and even tropical storm Sandy was unable to end the current record for the longest period without a land-falling major hurricane in the USA. Also noted was the very low tropical cyclone ACE value this year, keeping recent values near the 30-year low.
January-October 2012 has been the ninth warmest such period since records began in 1850. The global land and ocean surface temperature for the period was about 0.45°C (0.81°F) above the corresponding 1961–1990 average of 14.2°C, according to the statement, although one should note that the period 1961-1990 was an acknowledged low point of the 20th century, and we really should have updated our baseline to 1981-2010 by now, in line with most other organisations worldwide. We would also note, however, that should we do so the alarmist nature of the 0.45°C would be lost when it diminished to something like 0.1°C. It is also worth noting that while some people have conjectured that this small increase since 1976 is caused by human activities, the WMO takes a longer view of climate, and cannot exclude the possibility that natural variability caused the 1976-1998 increase, especially since the MWP, RMP and Minoan WPs were all warmer than today, as noted above.
The year began with a weak-to-moderate strength La Niña, which had developed in October 2011. The presence of a La Niña during the start of a year tends to have a cooling influence on global temperatures, and this year was no different. After the end of the La Niña in April 2012, the global land and ocean temperatures rose increasingly above the long-term average with each consecutive month. This was both unsurprising and uninteresting, and we really shouldn’t have mentioned it, except that it sounds alarmist. It happens every time the planet moves from La Nina to El Nino conditions. The six-month average of May–October 2012 was among the four warmest such periods on record, but, as noted above this means nothing from an anthropogenic point of view.
(to be continued)
Bob,
Magic, thanks! Good work, well written.
Yes, but each time we refute them someone sees it for the first time and their eyes are opened.
(continued from above)
“Naturally occurring climate variability due to phenomena such as El Niño and La Niña impact on temperatures and precipitation on a seasonal to annual scale. But they do not alter the underlying long-term trend of rising temperatures due to climate change as a result of human activities,” said WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud. However, naturally occurring climate variability due to other phenomena do impact our climate on longer timescales. We know this because of previous variaitions in climate, such as the Warm Periods noted previously, and the Little Ice Age (LIA). Because of this, we simply cannot ascribe any current warming to human causes, since nothing we see puts any recent warming outside of previous rates.
“The extent of Arctic sea ice reached a new record low. The alarming rate of its melt this year highlighted the cyclic nature of this region of the planet, as has been observed throughout the ages. The simultaneous record high Antarctic sea ice extent shows that the earth’s balance is however being maintained, as expected.
Climate is changing, as it always has, and will continue to do so regardless of the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which have risen constantly and again reached new records, albeit very far short of historical values that were reached at a time when life flourished across the world,” added Mr Jarraud.
The Arctic reached its lowest annual sea ice extent since the start of satellite records on 16 September at 3.41 million square kilometers. This was 18% less than the previous record low of 18 September, 2007. The 2012 minimum extent was 49 percent or nearly 3.3 million square kilometers (nearly the size of India) below the 1979–2000 average minimum. Some 11.83 million square kilometers of Arctic ice melted between March and September 2012. We are somewhat embarrassed to mention this, since everybody knows that the ice melts every year between March and September, and re-freezes again. But we’re hoping that some slower people won’t notice, and will simply quote us unthinkingly on skeptic blogs.
On the other hand, the Antarctic reached its highest annual sea ice extent since the start of satellite records on 22 September at 19.45 million square kilometers. This conclusively disproves the AGW hypothesis, which predicts that both Arctic and Antarctic regions will warm due to greenhouse gas rises, since there is very little water vapour in the atmosphere here. The fact that only one pole has warmed while the other has cooled shows that greenhouse gases are not the cause of this behaviour.
WMO will release a 10-year report on the state of the climate, “2001-2010, A Decade of Extremes” on 4 December 2012. It was produced in partnership with other United Nations and international agencies and highlights the warming trend for the entire planet, its continents and oceans during the past decade, with an indication of its impacts on health, food security and socio-economic development. We hope by this to greatly improve the power given to unelected global governance bodies, and make a tidy profit along the way via carbon trading and investments in heavily-subsidised green energy.
There, fixed.
Perfect. I hope the WMO appreciates your helpfulness.
Perfect Bob! “standing ovation”
Thank you. (Acknowledges applause airily)
This is all so unexpected, but I have a little speech I prepared earlier…
🙂
As I thought, the comments above are just the usual nonsense in response to observed reality – tell it to the WMO, boys…
Part of the problem, BD, is that this press release mixes together observations of reality with theories of what caused those observations. So there’s been a little warming (perhaps!) but there’s no proof it was caused by humanity’s actions. You should dial back your scorn and derision and provide evidence of what you so strongly believe.
Richard, it is immaterial what I “believe”; what matters is what the World Meteorological Organisation OBSERVES is actually happening, as per their press release above.
Argue with that, if you can… but you can’t, because you don’t have a worldwide network of weather stations, ships, climatologists and satellites, do you?
Anyway, for even the most ill-informed, there is always hope, as per the following “road to Damascus” experience of an erstwhile Fox News devotee:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Xzw1dZNWiL8
I don’t argue with the observations, but with the reasoning from them.
OK, Rt, maybe this is progress?
If you want attribution studies that link human CO2 emissions with rising atmospheric CO2, you could start here:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Are-humans-too-insignificant-to-affect-global-climate-intermediate.htm
then go here:
https://www.ipcc.unibe.ch/publications/wg1-ar4/faq/wg1_faq-2.1.html
or just pick up any introductory text, such as “Global.Warming.and.Climate.Change.Demystified” or “Global.Warming.for.Dummies”
>”…then go here:”
Then we go to the metrics that don’t support the hypothesizing Brando (e.g. HadCRUT4, RSS, UAH, OHC, SST, DLR, etc this century in particular). Is it a little inconvenient for you go there Brando?
And we’ve been to the IPCC’s bogus CO2 forcing expression. You’ve yet to go there Brando.
We’d like to go to the tropical tropospheric hotspot and positive water vapour feedback but we can’t can we Brando?
Then we go to the other natural forcings that overwhelm GHG forcing even if we accept the IPCC’s forcing expression and apply it (e.g. solar activity, cloudiness levels – Stephens et al). You don’t like going there at all do you Brando?
But we’ve gone over all this before and of course you deny it all don’t you Brando?
That was hilarious BD. I loved that video. the cracking voice, “there must be something we can do for the children”
Maybe I’ll have a Road to Damascus moment and the image of Lord Hansen will appear before me in a blaze of white light, surrounded by the prophets Mann and Trenberth
There must be something we can do…….
….for the children ….
!!!
Andy, the contempt you feel for your own child / children is your problem – and theirs.
You will have some explaining to do in a few years, won’t you?
“Daddy, why didn’t you try to help us when you could? Why didn’t you care, Daddy?”
Whoever you are: this is again offensive, again unacceptable. You’re incapable of civilised discourse, so you’re out of here. Bye. – RT
Contempt?
What do you suggest I do?
Give all my money to Al Gore?
Kill myself?
Maybe if you found a different tune to play, someone might start listening.
>”You will have some explaining to do in a few years, won’t you?”
Why? It’s the IPCC that needs to do some explaining right now given their failed warming predictions.
And don’t forget the predictions of a solar grand minimum and a cool period to come, that hasn’t gone away.
Any explaining in a few years could very well be after a meal of humble pie by the warmists among us (that includes you of course Brando).
Brandoch,
Don’t ever, again, use such a blatantly emotional, guilt-tripping excuse for an argument anywhere where I can read it. I have two daughters that I delight in and love dearly. I deplore your shoddy attempt to use that link with my children as some goad to make me do what I know to be totally wrong.
For your interest, I do not worry about them from a climate point of view (save if the next ice age arrives soon). Rather I fear that ordinary people, stampeded into making ruinous economic decisions as a country, will pauper them.
Harsh call, this is a totally fair argument. What if the scientific community is right and your little session group is wrong? You may have noticed that the New York Times, New Scientist, and others have been writing articles on how global warming is worse than we thought.
The ‘no warming in 15 years’ meme is disingenuous. Nine of the 10 hottest years on record have occurred since 2001. 2012 s going to probably going to come in at 9th, despite the La Nina.
I suspect that history will judge this generation harshly, as we did have a window of opportunity to act.
Shame Brandoch has gone, I was hoping to find out what Action on Climate Change he was proposing. perhaps the youth delegation at Doha can offer some insight.
Let’s all fly to Doha and tell the rest of the world to Take Action.
Can we do it?
Yes we can!
Let’s all Take Action now!
Etc.
Heh, I like it. But it turns out BD’s best advice was “gutless fool”. I wouldn’t put much store by anything he said. – RT
>”You may have noticed that the New York Times, New Scientist, and others have been writing articles on how global warming is worse than we thought.”
COP time, we expect that. They’re just regurgitating scary scripts provided by Potsdam et al – nothing really new of course.
>”The ‘no warming in 15 years’ meme is disingenuous. Nine of the 10 hottest years on record have occurred since 2001. 2012 s going to probably going to come in at 9th, despite the La Nina.”
Except the warmist meme is “on current trends we’re on track for 4 C warming this century” but the reality is that on current trends we’re on track for 0 C change – no warming or cooling.
>”What if the scientific community is right and your little session group is wrong? [……..]
I suspect that history will judge this generation harshly, as we did have a window of opportunity to act.”
We have the prediction from astrophysics (part of the “scientific community unless I’m badly mistaken) of a solar grand minimum and cool period over the next few decades to factor in to future scenario possibilities (something the IPCC seems reluctant to do).
A cool period similar to Maunder or Dalton and long before 2100, particularly in the NH, will have more immediate health and economic consequences than an off-track warming scenario. Even now, cold events kill humans and animals, wipe out fruit and crop harvests, and disrupt energy allocation to industry.
We have the evidence of this right here on this blog, just visit Open Threads: South America, Europe, Asia and read about it (Peru issued 97,000 blankets in July this year for people suffering colder than normal temperatures). This is the obscure news that the MSM doesn’t pick up, preferring to feed the unwary with a steady diet of warmist doom after the tenuous connection established from the latest “unprecedented” disaster, they’re blind to anything else even when dozens of people die of cold as they do every year.
History will be judging the climate science community harshly (not our “little session group”) if the astrophysics cooling prediction turns out correct and the CO2 warming prediction turns out wrong (as it is so far this century). We’ll know in only a couple of years who is right Simon.
And you may have noticed how these articles offer no proof much beyond the Arctic sea ice, something that is actually completely irrelevant to us, considering that sea ice melting doesn’t raise sea levels. At the same time, we see total Antarctic ice volume (land and sea) increasing in extent. To confirm this, sea level rise has slowed.
We see very little warming over the past 16 years, at a time when Hansen predicted that the human fingerprint would stand out clearly. The small warming rate we have had is less than the models predicted. Surely this is good news? Surely it’s better than we thought?
I have three kids, luckily they all have brains of their own, and don’t need the NY Times to tell them what to think.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qh2sWSVRrmo
>”…..you don’t have a worldwide network of weather stations, ships, climatologists and satellites, do you?”
No, don’t have GCM’s either. But we can compare those observations with IPCC CO2-forced GCM simulations and turns out the GCM simulations are out-of-the-money:-
http://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/christy-fig.jpg?w=808&h=622
Looks like a COP-out to me (Ha!).
As David Attenborough would say:
“Here we see the denier in his natural habitat, that of carefully-selected and poorly-understood disinformation and pseudoscience.
He can feed all day on this dross, without stopping for a moment’s thought….”
>”….carefully-selected”
Not that careful, just the observed metrics that you prattled on about up-thread that we “don’t have” according to you. In this case RSS and UAH
http://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/christy-fig.jpg?w=808&h=622
>”….and poorly-understood disinformation and pseudoscience”
That would be the IPCC CO2-forced GCM simulations in the above linked comparison wouldn’t it, because they appear to be in conflict with the observations?
I have just started reading Montford’s “Hiding the Decline” Chapter One gives NZ a good mention.
Richard, your faith in one carefully-selected contrarian scientist out of many thousands (Judith Curry) is hardly surprising, as she exhibits the same intellectual flaws as yourself:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Judith_Curry
Spectacular rant against Judith Curry Brando but what has that got to do with IPCC GCM simulations off course against observations? Is it just that you prefer to attack the person?
BTW, this http://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/christy-fig.jpg?w=808&h=622 is not a JC graph, she just hosts it. But you might like to tell us all what exactly it is about it that offends you so much Brando. Isn’t this just what we should be doing, monitoring climate prediction KPI’s to check for prediction failure (just as the US Senate were doing when presented with the same graph)?
Hardly a measure from which to justify doling out Green Climate Fund billions is it?
>”Hardly a measure from which to justify doling out Green Climate Fund billions is it?”
Govts just might be noticing too, Greenpeace Cindy laments at HT (appropriately titled post ‘Things we could only have dreamed of’):-
“The other key issue is the Green Climate Fund – but right now there appears to be not enough money to pay for the staff to oversee the rules and framework that governments have been working so hard on.”
That’s the thing about bureaucracy Cindy, it’s not self funding and funding of this nature is invariably by tax revenue (tagged for other use these days) from developed countries – like the gas/coal/nuclear based industrial powerhouses of Germany, US, France and Japan.
Good on you Bob D for making the effort to give a serious reply
Problem with this silly season is there are so many unsound headline grabbers coming out of Doha that it would be impossible to find time to refute them all.
Yes, Jim, I quite understand your predicament.
Now, your qualifications are…..?
Maybe you’d like to tell us what you will be telling your children in years to come, Brandoch.
What “action” did you take to fight the climate?
Sorry Guys, but attempting to persuade Brandon to accept a view of science he does not wish to even consider is obviously futile. His silly Hansenesque statements about future generations asking rhetorical questions are childish attempts to make us evil deniers feel guilty and repent and mend our ways!
And anyone who consistently quotes the egregious Skeptical Science, which bends history on it’s site and which supports the sneeringly-nasty Dr Lewandowsky in attempts to cast sceptics as loonies who will believe anything makes me chuckle.
Brandon has succeeded again and must be laughing his head off at our collective gullibility! He has once again hi-jacked a perfectly good thread that was developing nicely into a compendium of interesting facts and anecdotal evidence about the evils wrought by windmills and other sources of low-frequency noise.
I’m all in favour of having a quality conversation about various topics, but Brandoch makes that impossible.
DNFTT!!!
Ignore him indeed. Just another wannabe from the SKS “crusher crew” sent to annoy. Trouble is they keep getting shown up as ignorant and fooled by their own propaganda . Its funny to watch Bob and Richard make him squirm.As for SKS. , even Joe Romm says their analysis is weak!
Personally I’d ban Brando. But that’s up to RT.
Good stuff on wind turbines. Enough to start my own crusade to save my children. Lol
I’ve just returned and seen the mayhem. Sorry about that. Brandoch Daha is banned.
Parting shots:
BD calls me a gutless fool.
The artless churl.
😉
I don’t think we’ll miss him, to be totally honest.
Banned? I am interested in the mechanism. I applaud the decision, even though I’m sure he/she will take it as some sort of a trophy. Does the mechanism ban his IP address, his email address or his handle. If any of these, then he can easily circumvent. ???
Mike,
WordPress explains that when a comment contains any of the specified words in its content, name, URL, e-mail, or IP, it can be held for moderation or marked as spam.
The specified words can be anything, from a name to an IP address. So it’s very flexible, but you’re right: it can be circumvented. Until we twig to the fact that the new person is being rude and abusive!
Richard, in banning Brandoch you have taken the only practical step in getting us free of his silly games of clog-the-thread and his non-science. You acted to save this blog as Brandoch, in my view, would ultimately have annoyed so many so thoroughly that traffic here would have slumped to consist only of Brandoch and whoever else could be bothered challenging his nonsense.
Well done!
Thank you, Alexander.
Seconded. We’re more than happy to discuss things reasonably, but as soon as these people just start to sling insults with every post, out they go, in my opinion.
t gets hard to explain what I believe happens at the molecular level, but I’ll give it a go.
Firstly, imagine an atmosphere without convection. Venus gets close to this because it is so dense. There is also very little wind because it rotates so slowly (244 Earth days per revolution) and so we can just about consider it to be a static atmosphere. Yet the (pseudo) adiabatic lapse rate is still observed and the same calculations that work for Earth also work there.
We know there are many more molecules where the pressure is higher, so we can assume there is a fairly smooth (near linear) decline in the density of molecules with increasing altitude.
So molecules don’t have to travel large distances up and down. Nor is it any restriction that as many go up as go down, because we already have the distribution we need. Energy can transfer in molecular collisions, without any particular molecule having to travel a significant distance.
So the temperature gradient is a bit like a concrete road going straight down a mountainside. If you pour loads of sand on it at various points (representing absorbed heat at different altitudes) the molecular interactions get temporarily thrown out of the nice equilibrium state they were in. The sand (heat) spreads out and blows away (energy gets radiated away) and it all settles back down to the supporting road.
However, if there is a long-term increase in mean Solar insolation levels it is more like adding a thin layer of concrete to the whole surface, creating a new road surface (temperature plot) which is higher but is still parallel to the old one and still has the same gradient. This is representative of what happens during warming periods in the natural ~1,000 (maybe ~1,400) year cycle and the superimposed ~60 year cycle.
So it’s as if the individual molecules being pulled downwards by gravity and pushed up by pressure from beneath realise they are in the wrong place on top of the pile of sand. So, like grains of sand spreading out, some go one way and some another way until the temperature hump (or dip) levels out and everything gets back to the natural gradient. Or, more precisely, their energy goes in different directions through collisions.
Hence, on Venus, if too much incident insolation is absorbed at the top of the atmosphere, the extra kinetic energy will be “bounced” down the chain (rather like conduction, but better called diffusion) without the individual molecules actually having to travel very far.
This creates an apparent heat flow, but it can only ever involve equal interchanges of PE and KE and thus no change in entropy, and so no violation of 2nd LoT.
Also, while this is happening, each layer in the Venus atmosphere will radiate away whatever extra energy it absorbs and hasn’t sent elsewhere by diffusion, so the temperature falls back to the base line.
As you go from day to night, I suggest that the whole temperature plot from the Venus surface to the TOA shifts downwards about 5 degrees, whilst retaining the same gradient.
Whatever happens, it is apparent that the surface itself will remain very close in temperature to the base of the atmosphere and its temperature is in fact at least “supported” by that of the base of the atmosphere, because conduction would prevent it getting significantly cooler. Stored energy beneath the crust would also have a stabilising effect as on Earth.
The overriding consideration is that, for both Earth and Venus, as well as other planets with thick enough atmospheres – Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune – this process must have happened in the atmosphere first (because of the effect of gravity) and then the surface temperature was established by that at the base of the atmosphere. The internal conduction plot from the core is then also set by the core temperature and the surface temperature. This of course all took a long time obviously at least millions of years, so, in the short term of just a few thousand years, the mass of energy under the surface changes little and so provides a solid stabilising effect.
Hope that’s helped clarify my thinking on all this. It leaves the conventional back radiation and feedback concepts right out of consideration – simply because they cannot override the mechanism which maintains the adiabatic lapse rate. So much for the AGW conjecture!
Doug Cotton
Sydney
Doug:
Surely you mean “at the top of the atmosphere” in the case of Venus, due to the relative opacity of the atmosphere? After all, it is the TOA in this case that sets the surface temperature via the pressure gradient.
Well here they are, the NZ Youth Delegation to Doha, proudly representing ALL of the world’s youth (their words)
All busy “taking action” on climate change, even from their air conditioned rooms in oil rich Qatar.
“largely self-funded” according to Scoop but nothing about funding on their website
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1211/S00418/youth-voices-connect-to-climate-negotiations.htm
“The majority of youth delegations in Doha are from wealthy, developed nations.”
Gosh, no kidding?
NGOs should remember that it costs us to bring them to conferences: US
DOHA: The US chief negotiator for climate change Jonathan Pershing has reminded the international green NGOs at Doha that it pays to bring them to these conferences.
He said so in a closed door meeting with the NGO representatives suggesting that they should remember who pays for their presence. TOI accessed the conversation recordings done secretly.
“We are one of the funders to make it possible for you to be at the table. I hope you recognize that many of you who come to the meetings you do, the US fights for you at every chance to give you a chance to be in this room,” he said.
In what is being considering rather patronizing by those who have heard the conversation, the US said, “What we also think is the participation of a lot of countries out there includes the ones that disagree with us.”
The US has come in under scathing comments by civil society recently from the developed and the developing countries for neither putting up the funds nor increasing their emission reduction targets even after President Obama in his victory speech recently said that he had not done enough in his first term to address climate change.
[…]
The global civil society plays a crucial role in the climate change negotiations especially mobilizing public pressure to force countries to do more. Though the civil society remains often divided on how much the rich countries or the emerging economies need to do, at the Doha meeting the EU and the US have come under tremendous criticism for neither putting up more money nor increasing their emission reduction pledges which right now stand lower than that of the developing countries.
>>>>>>>
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/environment/global-warming/ngos-should-remember-that-it-costs-us-to-bring-them-to-conferences-us/articleshow/17417399.cms
Ah yes, the global “civil society”. Darlings of the UN.
Yes I have been reading a bit about “common purpose” recently too. There are some rather dubious organisations steering our societies out there.
Other than the fact that you can have your foster children taken away from you if you are a member of Ukip, did you know that you can be deemed unfit to adopt (in the UK) if you have a body mass index that is too high?
By the way, you should check out Mt Hutt’s webcam
http://www.nzski.com/mountain.jsp?site=mthutt
There is quite a lot of fresh snow up there today! (30th Nov)
Anyone want to comment on:
Comparing climate projections to observations up to 2011. Rahmstorf et al 2012
“global temperature continues to increase in good agreement with the best estimates of the IPCC, especially if we account for the effects of short-term variability due to the El Niño/Southern Oscillation, volcanic activity and solar variability.”
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/7/4/044035/article
I haven’t had the chance to read it yet, but there is something on that here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/11/28/mythbusting-rahmstorf-and-foster/
Nick,
1. The abstract says that “global temperature continues to increase in good agreement with the best estimates of the IPCC…” But Figure 1 clearly shows the stasis in global surface temperatures since about 1995, which contradicts that statement.
2. The abstract continues: “…especially if we account for the effects of short-term variability due to the El Niño/Southern Oscillation, volcanic activity and solar variability.” But at WUWT Bob Tisdale explains that you cannot remove the effects of ENSO in the way Rahmstorf claims to have done.
3. Even if this paper demonstrates a recent global temperature increase it does not help us understand its causes.
It seems ironic, given the debate about the reliability of climate models, that the paper advises “Our results highlight the need to thoroughly validate models with data of past climate changes before applying them to projections.” But I strongly agree.
Hi Richard T, thanks for taking the time to look at the paper. To comment on the points you raise:
1. Figure 1 shows about 0.2 (0.3 in the adjusted series) degrees of temperature increase since 1995. Can you please explain how you interpret this as stasis?
2. I find Bob’s claims unconvincing. As far as I can tell his thesis is that part of the world’s oceans do not follow ENSO. How he gets from here to his claim that the effects of ENSO cannot therefore be removed from the global temperature series is unclear. If you have a better understanding of what he is getting at I would appreciate some clarification.
3. This paper demonstrates that once short term noise from known causes is removed the IPCC predictions are very accurate The IPCC predictions assume CO2 forcing so I think this paper adds weight to the argument that CO2 significantly forces global temperatures.
I still haven’t had the chance to read it, but a few things spring to mind:
1/ The tropospheric hot spot is supposed to be warming faster that surface temperature, but if Rahmstorf is right then it would appear the upper troposphere is warming at a much slower rate than the surface temperature (or lower troposphere), and as a result debunks AGW theory on the grounds that there is no positive feedback from water vapour. Either the upper troposphere is cooling in relation to the lower troposphere, or the ground temperature data are exaggerated (i.e. Rahmstorf is wrong). As CO2 can only warm the atmosphere at 1.2C maximum per doubling, Rahmstorf’s temperature rises must be from something non-anthropogenic, as a mid/upper troposphere that is warming at a slower rate than the lower troposphere proves the warming can’t be due positive water vapour feedback but a forcing other than CO2.
Another thing, Rahmstorf says the following:
‘Observed annual global temperature, unadjusted (pink) and adjusted for short-term variations due to solar variability, volcanoes and ENSO (red) as in Foster and Rahmstorf (2011).’
Do the models take these factors into account and make these adjustments and if not, how is it that Rahmstorf’s data can match the models when they both use different criteria to justify the adjustments? If the models don’t factor ‘solar variability, volcanoes and ENSO’ but Rahmstorf does, the match can’t show a reinforcement of the models as the results are through different criteria that invalidates the methods of each other. No? If Rahmstorf raises the temperature by including ‘solar variability, volcanoes and ENSO’, the same would be true for the models and they would disagree with Rahmstorf as they would also rise.
Hi Magoo,
May I suggest you take the time to read the paper before you comment on it.
And we’d like to see your response to Magoo’s points Nick because if you’d actually considered the comment instead of dismissing it on a not-having-read-the-paper pretext, there’s still 2 cases to answer that he puts forward that don’t require word-for-word familiarity with the paper.
Nick, As to points 1& 3:
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/11/29/open-climate-letter-to-un-secretary-general-current-scientific-knowledge-does-not-substantiate-ban-ki-moon-assertions-on-weather-and-climate-say-125-scientists/
>”CO2 significantly forces global temperatures”
Wrong, not even close. Go to the solar thread here:-
https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/open-threads/climate/climate-science/solar/#comment-155253
‘Global and diffuse solar radiation in Spain: Building a homogeneous dataset and assessing their trends’
from Global and Planetary Change
A. Sanchez-Lorenzo, J. Calbó, M. Wild (2012)
Solar/cloudiness forcing +3.9 Wm-2 per decade 1985-2010. By way of comparison, the alleged forcing from increased CO2 during the same period was only 0.41 Wm-2 per decade (+0.11 Wm-2 at the Earth surface). These figures are corroborated by Stephens et al 2012 and Wild et al 2012.
Up-thread from there you’ll find that the solar forcing is not even being measured directly by SORCE as we have been led to believe.
https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/open-threads/climate/climate-science/solar/#comment-150764
Then there’s the difference between PMOD (the warmists fav) and ACRIM. The flat trend in the PMOD composite is an artifact of uncorrected ERBS degradation. All explained here:-
http://www.globalwarmingskeptics.info/archive/index.php/thread-1843.html
Quoting:-
“Scafetta and West 2008 found that up to 70% of the warming over the last 50 years can be explained by just TSI alone when you use the ACRIM dataset. This does not include other natural causes like Cloud Cover decrease, PDO, AMO, Volcanism etc.”
If we even accept the IPCC’s CO2 forcing curve as valid (it isn’t), CO2 is a very minor player at best. There are far greater forcings working and that has become abundantly clear as each new forcing paper (solar/cloud/aerosols in particular) and investigation revelation (SORCE/PMOD/ACRIM) helps piece together the explanations of climate since the LIA.
>”2. I find Bob’s claims unconvincing. As far as I can tell his thesis is that part of the world’s oceans do not follow ENSO. How he gets from here to his claim that the effects of ENSO cannot therefore be removed from the global temperature series is unclear. If you have a better understanding of what he is getting at I would appreciate some clarification.”
Energy divergences.
Tisdale:-
Same for the North Atlantic, Figure 4, as Tisdale states “which show the same ENSO-related divergences even though the North Atlantic data is isolated from the tropical Pacific Ocean and, therefore, not directly impacted by the ENSO events”.
Figure 4 http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/figure-42.png
Tisdale summarizes:-
Figure 5 http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/figure-52.png
Note that Figure 5 is an El Niño dominated era in which energy is not “consumed” (as Tisdale puts it) between events. Figure 5 would look very different in a La Niña dominated era and it is not out of the question that climate is now entering such an era. The same upward climate shifts (steps) will not occur as in the Figure 5 era and there’s nothing to discount downward shifts instead.
Basically, the different ocean regions cannot be considered a homogeneous mass with heat transfers performing completely in sync throughout from which ENSO can be plucked out because ENSO is integral to planetary energy distribution whether that leads to heat accumulation or release outside of the actual event but each region performs differently i.e. global warming or cooling is not “global”.
The other way of looking at it is that if ENSO is to be taken out of climate then the residual ENSO energy must be taken out too (in an an El Niño dominated era), something Foster and Rahmstorf do not do. All that’s left then is a meaningless flat non-climate sans shifts.
But then how would a La Niña dominated era be treated?
>”But then how would a La Niña dominated era be treated?”
Rahmstorf, Foster and Cazenave don’t actually state the period of their study except to say “past few decades” “up to 2011” but we can deduce from Figure 1 that their GAT period begins at 1980:-
RF&C http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/7/4/044035/article
This is a major cherry picking exercise because if we look at the MEI record here:-
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/ts.gif
1980 – 2011 was an El Niño dominated period with 2 major events in particular – 82/83 and 97/98. The period prior to that (1950 – 1980) was dominated by La Niña conditions and the climate cooled over that period.
RF&C’s approach only works – that is, to return a warming trend – over the 1980 – 2011 period. It would NOT work to support warming over the 1950 – 1980 period because the opposite to removing energy in a period of generally positive MEI departure (warmiing, uptrend, accumulation of energy) as RF&C have done is to add energy in during a period of generally negative MEI departure (cooling, downtrend, release of energy). That is simply a nonsensical approach.
Given that from about 2006 the indication from the MEI is a cyclical return to negative MEI departure similar to 1950 – 1980 (30 years), it follows that we could reasonably expect conditions similar to that regime to become dominant out to around 2036 (30 years), although that’s not for certain.
Rahmstorf, Foster and Cazenave are only looking at half the MEI picture because that is the aspect that suits their warmist perspective.
Hi Richard C,
Since Rahmstorf et al are demonstrating the accuracy of the IPCC predictions once short term noise from known factors is removed it seems nonsensical to start any earlier than 1980 since there were no IPCC predictions in this period to compare against.
In any case Bob Tisdale’s analysis also starts in 1980 and he is attempting to explain away global temperature increases rather than reconcile them with the IPCC projections so any claim of cherry picking should more correctly be aimed at Bob. I’m pretty sure his claim that SST warming is caused by ENSO breaks down before 1980.
>”it seems nonsensical to start any earlier than 1980 since there were no IPCC predictions in this period to compare against.”
But there IS an MEI record. Besides, now you’re jumping from RF&C to IPCC. Make up your mind what you want us to address. You asked for comments on RF&C, not IPCC projections or hindcasts
>”In any case Bob Tisdale’s analysis also starts in 1980″
That’s because he’s undertaken an apples-to-apples analysis of RF&C
>”…and he is attempting to explain away global temperature increases”
Rubbish. His non-detrended graphs show the increase. He doesn’t explain AWAY anything. He (and Trenberth) explains that RF&C cannot just pluck out an ENSO event because there is residual energy from that event that dissipates (or not, depends on the region) over the subsequent period.
“>rather than reconcile them with the IPCC projections”
Again, why are you carrying on about IPCC “projections” when you’ve asked about RF&C? But in response anyway, any simulation prior to 2000 is a hindcast, not a projection. IPCC CMIP3 simulations (AR4) did NOT hindcast the 30s/40s warming or the following 50s to late 70s period. The simulations miss that peak altogether despite fuzzy AR4 graphs that attempt to create the impression they did.
>”…so any claim of cherry picking should more correctly be aimed at Bob”
Rubbish. There is NO REASON whatsoever for RF&C not to utilize the full MEI record. Tisdale was merely following their lead but his analysis is inadequate too but as a result of RF&C’s initial cherry-picked period and his analysis of it, not because he chose that period himself.
>”I’m pretty sure his claim that SST warming is caused by ENSO breaks down before 1980.”
What SST warming? Here’s HadSST2 1940 – 1980:-
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1940/to:1980/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1940/to:1980/trend
There was no warming. This is entirely consistent with the La Niña dominated regime at the time. But as soon as El Niño dominates again, SST rises to about 2004:-
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1980/to:2004/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1980/to:2004/trend
Then the MEI departure reverses positive to negative and SST cools 2004 – 2012:-
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2004/to:2012/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2004/to:2012/trend
SST warming AND cooling is totally in sync with ENSO. Meantime, over the entire period there is a solar forcing acting also beginning back at the LIA (totally understated by the IPCC to-date) but ENSO modulates the solar heat accumulation (along with thermal lag, currents, overturning etc) so that there is no gradual upwards trend. Now that solar activity is in recession, SST can be expected to cool (as is has since 2004) rather than just flatten as it did 1940 – 1980 when solar activity was rising.
Hi Richard C,
Not sure if you noticed but all the graphs in Bob’s WUWT post were from his youtube video which was released before the Rahmstorf et al paper was published. Bob cannot be consider to be “following their lead”. Rather he has put some new words around work he had already done, probably for his book which he promotes at the end of the post.
Finally since the Rahmstorf et al paper specifically deals with the IPCC projections I think it is reasonable to include them in the discussion. I’m not sure why you take issue with this.
>”IPCC CMIP3 simulations (AR4) did NOT hindcast the 30s/40s warming”
AR4 17 model average vs HadCRUT3 1900 – 2000
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/IPCC-17-model-20th-Century-vs-HadCRUT3-large.jpg
Didn’t do too well around 1910 either. And now they don’t mimic 21st century, all because the simulations are following the LD/ML CO2 curve instead of factoring in real drivers.
Hi Richard C,
Could you explain why you choose to graph the 1940-1980 time period rather than the 1950-1980 period you initially mentioned?
The 1950-1980 period shows reasonable warming which as I stated earlier demonstrates that Bob’s theory breaks down.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1950/to:1980/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1950/to:1980/trend
>”Bob cannot be consider to be “following their lead”. ”
His WUWT post was as a result of a request to respond to RF&C so obviously he was following their lead because their paper is the subject of his post.
>”Rather he has put some new words around work he had already done, probably for his book which he promotes at the end of the post.”
EXACTLY, Bob Tisdale wrote the ENSO book – literally.
>”Finally since the Rahmstorf et al paper specifically deals with the IPCC projections I think it is reasonable to include them in the discussion. I’m not sure why you take issue with this.”
Your assumption is that to compare the RF&C series (that you and they term “observations”), the series must be a valid observation series – it isn’t. In any case once the full 20th/21st century SST, MEI, HadCRUT3 record is considered (as my previous comment), both RF&C and IPCC fail. RF&C because their approach is nonsense during generally negative MEI departure periods and their ignorance of residual ENSO energy. IPCC because their hindcasts and forecasts don’t mimic climate.
>”Could you explain why you choose to graph the 1940-1980 time period rather than the 1950-1980 period you initially mentioned?”
Yes, the MEI that I referenced begins at 1950:-
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/ts.gif
PDO is a similar but longer index going back to 1900:-
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/ts.gif
The acute positive departure at 1940 (when SST was high) then negative at 1950 (when SST was low) is clearly evident as is the negative to positive change at 1980.
>”The 1950-1980 period shows reasonable warming which as I stated earlier demonstrates that Bob’s theory breaks down”
No the fact remains, your 1950 – 1980 SST “warming” did not rise above 1940 levels as per my 1940 – 1980 plot except for a 1977 spike that comes close i.e. that negative MEI/PDO regime was cooler than the 30s and 40s positive PDO regime and there is no “break down” in MEI/PDO/SST linkage, it is completely synchronous 1900 – present.
Taking a more naive view of this paper, I am asking myself how the authors can detrend “known” variability from the dataset.
We measure observations in nature, we make assertions, we test them against nature.
How did they come to the conclusion that these were “known” variables?
>”How did they come to the conclusion that these were “known” variables?”
This goes back to F&R 2011 on which Tisdale posted twice. There is some explanation here in the first post along with the criticisms in the section “ENSO is not an exogenous factor” e.g. Trenberth et al 2002, C&S 2010, Thompson et al 2008.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/02/tisdale-takes-on-taminos-foster-rahmstorf-2011/
Basically, there are “known” exogenous factors e.g. TSI (when the data is valid, F&R use PMOD but ACRIM explains 70% of warming after corrections) and volcanic aerosols but ENSO is not one of those. As Tisdale puts it in summary after Fig 17, ENSO is a coupled ocean-atmosphere process that cannot be accounted for with a simple linear regression.
Richard C,
I did not choose the 1950-1980 period you did. Now you appear to prefer 1940-1980 period.
Neither of these periods show the cooling you claim, although the warming from 1950-1980 is much stronger.
Just to clarify, what exactly is your definition of cherry picking?
>”…there is no “break down” in MEI/PDO/SST linkage, it is completely synchronous 1900 – present.”
Hence: Temp/PDO+AMO+Sunspot Integral correlation R2 0.96 vs Temp/CO2 0.44.
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.nz/2010/01/climate-modeling-ocean-oscillations.html
>”I did not choose the 1950-1980 period you did. Now you appear to prefer 1940-1980 period.”
I explained why Nick. MEI only starts at 1950. If MEI started at 1940 i could have included that period but I CANNOT, hence my subsequent recourse to PDO which is a longer index. This is second time I’ve explained this, I hope there doesn’t have to be a third.
>”Neither of these periods show the cooling you claim,
The 1930s/40s were clearly warmer in absolute terms than the 1950s – 1970s i.e. cooling. And there has been a cooling trend in SST since 2004.
>”..although the warming from 1950-1980 is much stronger.”
Stronger than what? 1910 – 1940 say?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1910/to:1940/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1910/to:1940/trend
Stronger? I don’t think so.
1950-1980 doesn’t rise above 30s/40s levels as I’ve already pointed out. Again I hope I don’t have to explain this a third time
>”Just to clarify, what exactly is your definition of cherry picking?”
The most desirable selection to suit an ulterior motive e.g. Rahmstorf, Foster and Cazenova picking 1980 as their start point because including the rest of the century ruins their warmist narrative. The last century SST looks like this with the 30 yr trends at each end compared:-
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1912/to:2012
If I were a warmist, I would not be comfortable attempting to explain why – in terms of CO2 forcing – the early trend is steeper than the most recent trend therefore I would simply ignore the earlier data as FR&C did. Neither could I explain the intervening period in terms of CO2 forcing either when it is so obviously out of kilter with the warming either side. That is the essence of cherry picking Nick; to EXCLUDE the inconvenient.
The IPCC models vs Obs would look so much better if they didn’t have to include that pesky 30s/40s warm period and the negative trend in the polynomial that results in HadCRUT3 1945 – 1965 or the 1915 – 1935 steepness, fortunately they cannot be so blatant:-
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/IPCC-17-model-20th-Century-vs-HadCRUT3-large.jpg
The woodfortrees plots didn’t come out as planned, I’ll try again.
1910 – 1940 vs 1950 – 1980
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1910/to:1980/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1910/to:1940/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1950/to:1980/trend
1912 – 2012
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1912/to:2012/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1912/to:1942/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1982/to:2012/trend
>”If MEI started at 1940 i could have included that period but I CANNOT”
As luck would have it, there’s an extended MEI index (MEI.ext) that goes back to 1871:-
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei.ext/ext.ts.jpg
From this ESRL page:-
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei.ext/index.html
The major positive departure around 1940 is evident as is negative around 1910, both of which coincide with respective high and low SSTs.
From that page, 1939 was a strong El Niño event:-
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei.ext/elnino.ext.jpg
And 1908 was a strong La Niña:-
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei.ext/lanina.ext.jpg
Late 1970s to present produces the most positive departure and late 1800s – early 1900s produces the most negative departure, again generally coinciding with respective warm and cool SST periods e.g. the 1877ish positive in among the negative of the period coincides with an SST spike at that time:-
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1871/to:2012
Nick, you say “the IPCC predictions are very accurate”.
Ben Santer seems to disagree:
This article concludes with this, with regard to Ben Santer:
“Failing to give due credit. Hiding the decline. Truncating the data. Threatening violence to critics. This is the AGW way.”
Hi Mike,
What I actually said was:
“This paper (Rahmstorf et al) demonstrates that once short term noise from known causes is removed the IPCC predictions are very accurate”
Ben’s paper says:
“Although the precise causes of such differences are unclear, model biases in lower stratospheric temperature trends are likely to be reduced by more realistic treatment of stratospheric ozone depletion and volcanic aerosol forcing.”
So actually I think Ben and Rahmstorf et al are largely in agreement that the removal of short term noise (ENSO, aerosols etc.) from known causes is the key to interpreting the IPCC predictions.
How are aerosols “short term noise”?
Do we have any measurements on current and historical aerosol levels and empirical evidence on how aerosols affect the climate?
Lindzen’s comments that aerosols are “artificial fudge factors” spring to mind here
Hi Andy,
Empirical evidence can be found in:
Foster G and Rahmstorf 2011 Global temperature evolution 1979–2010
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4/044022/pdf/1748-9326_6_4_044022.pdf
Measure of historical Stratospheric Aerosol Optical Thickness here:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/strataer/
Finally got around to reading Rahmstorf Nick. As I said before, if he’s right then there are major problems with the AGW theory.
The mid-upper troposphere is supposed to be warming at a faster rate than the lower troposphere/surface temperatures, & if it was it would be evidence of positive feedback from water vapour. The upper troposphere has not warmed as expected and the lower troposphere and surface temperatures are higher than the mid-upper troposphere.
If Rahmstorf and the models are correct then the discrepancy between the upper troposphere and the surface temperatures are worse than ever. This proves empirically that there is no positive feedback from water vapour. As water vapour is supposed to be the vast majority of global warming the question is raised – in the absence of water vapour, what else could be driving the increasing temperatures?
1/ It can’t be CO2 as it can only raise the temperature a maximum of 1.2C per doubling of total atmospheric CO2 concentrations – i.e. it’s too weak.
2/ It can’t be other feedbacks as all of them combined are still much, much weaker than water vapour – i.e. they’re too weak.
3/ Ground temperatures are overestimating the temperatures. Possible.
4/ There is another forcing that is non-anthropogenic that is causing the warming. Possible
The fact of the matter is that, if the upper troposphere is warming at a slower rate than the surface there are no grounds for the warming being anthropogenic in nature. This is due to the fact that, without positive feedback from water vapour, CO2 is just too weak to cause the warming by itself. Even if CO2 is combined with all the other known feedbacks except water vapour it is still too weak by a large margin.
Either one of the following is true but not both:
1/ Either the ground temperatures are exaggerated making the upper troposphere look like it’s warming at a slower rate than the ground.
2/ The models and Rahmstorf’s ground temperatures are correct and the surface really IS warming at a faster rate than the mid-upper troposphere, thereby invalidating positive feedback from water vapour.
Whichever is true, the AGW hypothesis fails as a result. The lack of a tropospheric hot spot is a major hitch for AGW theory, and until it is addressed there is no evidence for AGW beyond the tiny 1.2C max. associated with CO2. Whatever is doing the warming that Rahmstorf and claims, it definitely isn’t CO2 related.
Foster and Rahmstorf 2011 only deals with volcanic aerosols which would explain the perception of aerosols being short-term noise.
A look at the full range of aerosols indicates they are anything but noise:-
‘Aerosol Forcing of Climate’
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~sgw/PAPERS/1995_Dahlem.pdf
Recent forcing papers (post Lindzen) e.g. Stephens et al, Wild et al, seem to be allocating a greater role to aerosols than previously from what I can gather, perhaps #3 after the solar/cloudiness combo. CO2 forcing doesn’t rise above the uncertainty levels on the other hand.
Hi Magoo,
Thanks for taking the time to read the paper. There are a couple of other possibilities that you have overlooked in your analysis.
One is that the temperature measurements of the troposphere are incorrect. If you are prepared to accept that ground surface temperatures are possibly flawed (despite all the evidence to the contrary) then you need to consider that the radiosonde data could be suspect as well.
The other possibility is that there are other forcings at play such as ozone depletion and volcanic aerosol forcing which are not included in the models of tropospheric warming.
Rahmstorf et al demonstrate that once short term noise from known causes is removed the IPCC predictions of global temperature are in good agreement with measured global temperatures so I suspect one of the above two possibilities is more likely than the scenarios you suggest.
>”One is that the temperature measurements of the troposphere are incorrect…….you need to consider that the radiosonde data could be suspect as well.”
Nope, the observation sets corroborate each other:-
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/model-trend/models-observed-tropophere-trend.jpg
>”Rahmstorf et al demonstrate that once short term noise from known causes is removed the IPCC predictions of global temperature are in good agreement with measured global temperatures”
Except that FRC12 uses TAR and AR4 simulations and only since 2000:-
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/RFC12_Fig1.jpg
The AR5/CMIP5 simulations starting 1975 look nothing like that against 7 year running average smoothed RSS and UAH:-
http://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/christy-fig.jpg?w=808&h=622
That is not a “good agreement” against observations that have essentially been smoothed similar to FR&C
By 2010 the CMIP5 average is 0.6 C above 1980 level but RFC12 only has 2010 about 0.45 C above 1980 from a vastly different simulation ensemble. The RF&C ensemble simulations only actually start at 2000 and the runs diverge radically from thereon. The ensemble doesn’t even concur as a group from 2000 onwards let alone with the heavily adjusted RF&C series and certainly not with actual measured temperature.
Re CMIP5 vs RSS/UAH Nick. INM-CM4 is right between UAH and RSS on the same flat trajectory (not the RF&C trajectory). It is the only model to achieve that (whether for right or wrong reasons) and also the only model to exhibit positive OLR sensitivity (doesn’t trap energy basically) which may turn out to be the correct rationale and configuration.
Where will that leave Rahmstorf, Foster and Cazenova if other model groups (noting the apparent success) also succeed in mimicing both absolute level and trajectory of simply smoothed observations with revisions that corroborate and validate the INM-CM4 configuration?
@ Nick: Both the satellites and the radiosondes confirm the lack of a tropospheric hot spot.
Page 13 – http://www.rossmckitrick.com/uploads/4/8/0/8/4808045/mmh_asl2010.pdf
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/DOUGLASPAPER.pdf
Just as a general observation, without drilling down into details, I find this line of argument somewhat unconvincing. The IPCC come up with.a projection, reality does not match it, and somehow they manage to find, out of the hat so to speak, an adjustment that makes their models valid.
Wasn’t it the same guys, the Potsdam ones, that is, who claimed that the cold winters that Europe had recently experienced were caused by global warming?
It’s all very plausible if you also buy into astrology and palm reading, but personally I’d like to see these guys put their money on some future projections and stick with it.
Rahmstorf, Foster, and Cazenave (2012) detrend for solar using PMOD (their detrending is a “novel” and “clever” approach according to SkS).
The following series of papers (there are others) demonstrates the deficiency of relying on PMOD to the exclusion of other TSI datasets and that detrending for solar has been carried out previously with other TSI datasets since 1980 providing explanations for much of planetary warming over that 30 period and also for a longer 50 year period.
Mordinov and Willson 2003 found that PMOD’s straight line in TSI over the last 30 years can be explained by not correcting the ERBE/ERBS data during the ACRIM Gap.
Scafetta 2009 documents the ERBS discrepency. Most (65-70%) of the warming can be explained with TSI alone over the last 30 years if ACRIM and other TSI measurements are to be right. If PMOD’s dataset were to be right, little attribution would be needed for TSI.
Scafetta and Willson 2009 also documented PMOD’s flaws (supports Wilson 1997) and that the TSI contribution since 1980 could be underestimated
Scafetta and West 2008 found that up to 69% of the warming over the last 50 years can be explained by just TSI alone using the ACRIM dataset. This does not include other natural causes like Cloud Cover decrease, PDO, AMO, Volcanism etc.
The ACRIM website describes the ACRIM – PMOD difference
Another TSI dataset, IRMB, agrees with ACRIM that TSI increased between the minima of SC 21 and 22, though not to the extent of ACRIM.
http://www.globalwarmingskeptics.info/attachment.php?aid=451
A is TSI measured by ACRIM, B is TSI measured by IRMB, and C is TSI measured by PMOD.
Re RFC12 Figure 1:-
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/RFC12_Fig1.jpg
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/7/4/044035/article
Why are the 1998 El Niño and 2007 La Niña events heavily reduced but the 2010 El Niño actually enhanced (added to)? There is no specific comment on the 2010 event in the paper or on why and how they arrived at a 2010 adjustment that is significantly different to the other ENSO adjustments (apart from their overall linear regression approach).
Adjustment to the 2010 El Niño proportionally similar to RFC12’s adjustment to the 1998 El Niño would place the RFC12 2010 level at the lower bound of the simulations and mean no warming 2006 – 2012. Their entire series would then concur with (be consistent with) Christy’s 7 year smoothing of RSS and UAH here:-
http://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/christy-fig.jpg?w=808&h=622
There’s something very dodgy about RFC12’s adjustment to the 2010 El Niño and their treatment of that critical event changes the game completely i.e. their series is inconsistent with the 7 year smoothed series because of that single adjustment.
The 2009/10 event was one of the 7 strongest since 1950:-
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/elnino.png
Why have RF&C enhanced the 2012 event (added to it) rather than reducing it consistent with other ENSO events?
Hi Richard T,
Have a look at the earlier paper
Foster G and Rahmstorf S 2011 Global temperature evolution
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4/044022/fulltext/
It is clarified there but let me know if it still does not make sense. I’m happy to run through it with you.
>”It is clarified there”
Nothing in F&R as to why the 2010 event should be treated any differently than all the other ENSO events.
>”but let me know if it still does not make sense.”
It actually makes sense to a degree. F&R and RF&C are essentially just short-term data smoothing exercises despite the hype but smoothing must retain the characteristics of the data, not modify them. Christy’s 7 year smoothing of RSS and UAH is far more radical by comparison so that he ends up with two series without the fluctuations of RF&C, but the signal is retained in the 7 year smoothing.
The only difference between the respective series (Christy vs FR&C) is the 2010 event. The 7 year smoothing retains the intrinsic trajectory of the data i.e. the 2010 ENSO event is merely smoothed just the same as all the other ENSO events. RF&C for some reason, instead of smoothing as for 1998, 2007 and all the other ENSO activity actually ADD data either side of the 2010 event where there was none previously and the smoothing to the peak is minimal compared to the reductions to the other event peaks – why?
>”I’m happy to run through it with you.”
Please do. Specific to the 2010 event in comparison to other significant events e.g. 1998 and 2007.
If they have managed to detrend the short term noise from the dataset, wouldn’t it be more useful to provide future IPCC projections with the short term noise added in?
Presumably there is some certainty to ENSO etc that they could add back in.
>”Presumably there is some certainty to ENSO etc that they could add back in.”
No certainty or cycle that I know of. There’s general regimes that can be seen in MEI.ext e.g. positive late 1970s to mid 2000s or negative late 1800s to early 1900s but in amongst the general regimes are the opposite departures:-
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei.ext/ext.ts.jpg
ENSO can only be added back in retroactively as for volcanism as far as I can tell. Tisdale states in the conclusion of a very long post (as usual):-
“And as shown in Figures 17 and 18, when the linear effects of ENSO are removed from Global Temperature anomalies, the remainder logically shows variations that reflect the opposing effects of ENSO.”
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2010/09/11/the-multivariate-enso-index-mei-captures-the-global-temperature-impacts-of-enso-differently-than-sst-based-indices/
I have no idea what that means but it seems vaguely relevant to your comment Andy. Perhaps you can make something of it.
I’m more inclined to go with the Temp/PDO+AMO+Sunspot integral correlation 0.96. That’s a model that can be projected from historic values.
>”I’m more inclined to go with the Temp/PDO+AMO+Sunspot integral”
Problem there is that SC 24 sunspot prediction is not going well. This is the latest observed vs prediction chart:-
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/sunspot.gif
The addition of the sunspot integral to PDO+AMO moves the temp correlation from 0.85 to 0.96. Nice to add in if the number can be predicted but it’s not necessary if if can’t.
I have to admit I am very cynical about this, however I don’t want to interrupt a good-faith discussion between Richard C and Nick.
To me it all feels like – if nature doesn’t fit the models, adjust nature.
Anyway, I’ll leave you chaps to have your in-depth discussion
You can ignore me (*ducks*)
>”I’m more inclined to go with the Temp/PDO+AMO+Sunspot integral”
Changed my mind. Make that PDO+AMO+TSI (TSI Hoyt) as in:-
‘US Temperatures and Climate Factors since 1895’
By Joseph D’Aleo,
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/US_Temperatures_and_Climate_Factors_since_1895.pdf
TSI provides the long-term warming (or cooling) trend. Information there (page 5) about the relationship between MEI and PDO +Warm Mode and -Cold Mode and the effect on temperatures.
Adding CO2 to PDO+AMO+TSI only moves the correlation from 0.85 to 0.89 (page 8).
D’Aleo paper featured at WUWT here:-
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/01/25/warming-trend-pdo-and-solar-correlate-better-than-co2/
That isn’t a paper. It’s a naive regression that any first year statistics student could perform.
It features pre-smoothing of data, inconsistent time periods, limited geographic exposure and conclusions unwarranted from the results. Why are you willing to believe this rubbish over and above more robust analyses such as Rahmstorf et al?
Just realized that “Hoyt” is a TSI proxy, not similar to PMOD or ACRIM type satellite sets. D’Aleo page 4:-
“The Hoyt-Schatten TSI series uses five historical proxies of solar irradiance, including sunspot cycle amplitude, sunspot cycle length, solar equatorial rotation rate, fraction of penumbral spots, and decay rate of the 11-year sunspot cycle. I found a correlation strength (r-squared) of 0.57”
Given the aforementioned difficulty with sunspot prediction, Hoyt-Schatten is not an improvement. I searched around for an improvement and found a recent paper that didn’t make the news to my knowledge:-
Reconstructed Total Solar Irradiance as a precursor for long-term solar activity predictions: a nonlinear dynamics approach
Stefano Sello. May 2012
Mathematical and Physical Models, Enel Research, Pisa – Italy
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1205.4966v1.pdf
Page 13:-
Looks like Dan Pangburn’s model out as far as 2020.
The conclusions are well worth a read. Sello reckons his technique is good for extrapolation of the next 3 solar cycles.
>”To me it all feels like – if nature doesn’t fit the models, adjust nature.”
Most of the RF&C adjustment is merely smoothing Andy (leaving aside use of PMOD). It’s only the RF&C treatment of the 2010 ENSO event the makes their series any different from Christy’s 7 year running average smoothing.
RF&C have definitely “adjusted nature” around the 2010 event and I’ll be very interested in Nick’s justification because that makes ALL the difference to the data trajectory and renders their series inconsistent with the smoothed RSS and UAH series by Christy.
>”Why are you willing to believe this” ?
I don’t subscribe to the use of Hoyt-Schatten for TSI (see up-thread) but the main reasons for PDO+AMO+TSI are:-
1) Correlation with observations (note addition of CO2 only improves correlation by 0.04).
2) Tested predictive capability of ocean oscillations (SOI has been used similarly and successfully by Dr Theodore Landsheidt) and progress on TSI as a predictor as data quality improves.
>”……over and above more robust analyses such as Rahmstorf et al?”
Robust? I think not e.g. PMOD uses uncorrected data and their treatment of the 2010 ENSO event is looking more bogus by the minute. The predictive capability of the RF&C series is not tested yet either. But I understand your need to denigrate a threat to your poster boys and warmist icon at every opportunity Simon.
>”PMOD uses uncorrected data”
This isn’t correct. There are corrections but it is the nature of the data used to fill the gap in each composite (result of Challenger disaster) that is in question, 90% interpolated in PMOD.
Point is that there is more than just one TSI composite to apply and consider, PMOD is the one with a negative trend so the likes of Rahmstorf and Foster are prone to exclude any other considerations. It wont be such an issue as it was as time goes on though, now that there is continuity of measurement and corroborating overlap of observations from different platforms.
Hi Richard C,
As requested the explanation for the adjustments to the periods you do not understand follows. The numbers are a bit rough as they are taken from the (fairly low res) graphs rather than the raw data sets but it should be sufficient for your understanding.
The summary is that 2010 is not treated any differently from the other years. Rather you have not understood how the adjusted series is generated. If you still think it is similar to 7 year smoothing then I suggest you read the paper rather than just looking at the pictures.
From fig 7 of Foster and Rahmstorf 2011, Global temperature evolution 1979–2010, the following can be determined:
In 1998 MEI (0.22C) is dominant but AOD (-0.01C) and TSI (-0.01C) pull it back somewhat so total exogenous forcing is 0.2C.
In 1999 the negative influence of MEI (-0.04C) is slightly weaker than TSI (0.05C) so total exogenous forcing is 0.01C.
In 2007 MEI (0.06C) is mostly cancelled by TSI (-0.05C) so total exogenous forcing is 0.01C.
In 2008 the negative influence of MEI (-0.2C) is further reduced by TSI (-0.04C) so total exogenous forcing is -0.24C.
In 2010 MEI (0.07) is dominant but is partly cancelled by TSI (-0.04) so total exogenous forcing is 0.03C.
In 2011 MEI (-0.26) is further reduced by TSI (-0.02) so total exogenous forcing is -0.28C.
This matches what is shown in fig 1 of Rahmstorf et al. 2012 who subtracts the exogenous forcing from the raw temperature record. This demonstrates that the IPCC predictions (which do not include the exogenous forcing) are accurate once these influences are removed from the raw data.
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4/044022/fulltext/
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/7/4/044035/article
>”Rather you have not understood how the adjusted series is generated. If you still think it is similar to 7 year smoothing then I suggest you read the paper rather than just looking at the pictures.”
You then follow that with the smoothing technique RF&C use. RF&C smooths the data Nick, there is no escaping that, but I’ve got no problem with smoothing (but they also make some data up and that I do have a problem with)).
Four points:
1) RF&C introduce data either side (mostly in the 2010 year) of the measured series peak at 2010 (light red line) where no datapoints existed in the measured data. The datapoints they introduce are derived from MEI (offset by TSI) but the MEI is an index, not measured temperature in degrees Celsius. They cannot simply introduce derived datapoints into a measured temperature series where no datapoints in degrees Celcius existed in the first instance. To do so is simply making up extraneous values, even to the extent of introducing a peak “temperature” in the 2010 year of about +0.37 anomaly when the actual measured temperature is down around +0.2 C.
There’s a similar instance at about 1993/4 on RF&C Figure 1:-
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/RFC12_Fig1.jpg
2) The actual 2012 peak reduction is fine by me mathematically but not physically. RF&C reduce the 1998 peak by 0.2 C. The 2010 MEI peak is 50% of the 1998 peak so an MEI-only proportional reduction to 2010 is 0.1 C. RF&C’s reduction after TSI is about 0.03 C, therefore TSI must equate to temperature of 0.07 C. SOHO/VIRGO (PMOD) shows the 1998/2010 difference in W/m2 which is shown as degrees C in the F&R TSI chart:-
http://www.acrim.com/
The difference is say 0.3 W/m2. The SB law tells us that the Earth’s surface should warm by 1 degree Celsius for every 3.3 Watts per square meter of radiative forcing, therefore 0.3 W/m2 equates to 0.09 C so the actual reduction to the peak is OK mathematically.
But does that TSI radiative forcing translate to measured temperature instantaneously (within a month say) so that the instantaneous offsetting rationale against MEI is valid? I don’t think so and I think this is why the net MEI/TSI/AOD temperature adjustment produces “temperature” where there wasn’t any to start with. The TSI will be absorbed at the earth’s surface especially by the ocean. That energy may take days, weeks, decades or even centuries to be released as heat measurable by temperature at surface. The 0.07 C TSI offset is not necessarily valid in this case. The proportional 0.1 C MEI-only reduction could even be a more valid adjustment.
3) The CMIP5 ensemble average is about 0.6 C higher by 2010 than the 1980 level that coincides with observations:-
http://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/christy-fig.jpg?w=808&h=622
That puts the CMIP5 2010 level at 0.5 C anomaly on RF&C Figure 1 and renders Figure 1 either out of date, or plotted incorrectly, or irrelevant, or something.
4) The absolute rise in RF&C Figure 1 1980 – 2010 is about 0.43 C (CMIP5 0.6 C). The alleged CO2 forcing over that period is:
dF = 5.35 ln(C/Co)
dF = 5,35 ln(389.78/338.68)
dF = 0,75 C
The alleged CO2 forcing overshoots RF&C’s 2010 level by 0.32 C (CMIP5 0.15 C indicating CMIP5 is a better comparison). We could use an at surface figure of 0.2 C (0.75/3.7) as per Hansen (I think) but then the CO2 forcing falls short by 0,23 C (CMIP5 0.4 C).
As always, it is difficult fitting CO2 into the picture.
# # #
In summary, the F&R/RF&C rationale is flawed by the application of a mix of offsetting phenomena (MEI/TSI/AOD) that are not mutually interacting in the instantaneous timeframe in which the net adjustment is derived.
It is not necessary to deconstruct the data by extracting selected phenomena in order to identify the intrinsic signal in the data over time e.g. EMD extracts intermediate mode frequencies (IMFs) that are the decadal and multidecadal oscillations of climate data and a residual which is the overall intrinsic data signal. The HadSST2 EMD residual looks exactly like RF&C Figure 1 from 1980 – 2011:-
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/52688456/HadSST2.xls
I could have saved Rahmstorf, Foster and Cazenave a great deal of time and effort.
It remains for the RF&C approach to be tested over time (just like all the other models).
The key is identifying inflexions in the trajectory of the data. It will only take a few years (maybe 3 or 5) to confirm or otherwise whether the RF&C approach is valid. If the trajectory of a moving average or polynomial say, continues unabated, it will be proved invalid and they’ve missed an inflexion back around 2004 (but Scafetta and INM-CM4 are still in-the-money). If the RF&C Figure 1 trajectory continues, their approach is valid along with the lower CMIP5 STDev limit and everyone else is wrong. If the trajectory turns down, they, the GCM’s and Scafetta are wrong but Sella, Abdusamatov, Pangburn and others are right.
Given that the latest El Niño is a fizzer, the PDO is in cold mode, SST is trending down, there’s not much to support a rise above 2010 level for a while.
NINO3.4 index back just above neutral:-
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/httpdata_r/images/climate/wz_nino34_weekly.png
RSS to August 2012:-
http://junksciencearchive.com/MSU_Temps/RSSglobe.png
An updated RF&C Figure 1 will necessarily drop back down at least 0.2 C from its 2010 level in the absence of an El Niño. And it wont go back up there (let alone above it) unless there is a strong El Niño in the near future.
Hi Richard C,
In response to your points above.
1) Foster and Rahmstorf 2011 explains how MEI, TSI and AOD indexs are converted into C
2) Foster and Rahmstorf 2011 incorporates process lag for each of the exogenous forcings into the temperature correction. Maybe you could do a little more reading and a little less typing
3) “Or something” is the correct answer, you are mistaken in your calculation
4) That is what the models are for, they are slightly more sophisticated than your estimate.
As for your EMD calculation, why don’t you present it properly, as a pdf say. As it is it can’t actually be read and frankly I can’t be bothered fixing it for you. I’m surprised no one else here has mentioned it.
>”That energy may take days, weeks, decades or even centuries to be released as heat measurable by temperature at surface”
SKS article touching on the delayed TSI => temperature aspect here:-
http://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?n=1242
Quoting
TSI Figure 1 caption “Warming already committed, but not yet manifest in surface temperature” and “The circled area is (roughly) the solar energy already absorbed by the ocean and yet to manifest itself in global temperatures i.e – warming already committed.”
The Solar Cycle
Because of the ocean’s thermal inertia (it takes a long time to warm up), global temperature change caused by the sun’s variabilty lags solar irradiance by about 18 months. The ‘trough’ in the solar cycle (figure 1) was therefore still exerting a cooling influence on surface temperatures in 2011. However this is expected to quickly change to a warming effect over the next 3-5 years because the sun is on its ascent to the peak of the next cycle. As circled in figure 1 – extra sunlight has gone into the oceans in the last 18 months. This warming is a ‘train that has already left the station’ so-to-speak, and will soon manifest itself in global temperature.
“…the sun is on its ascent to the peak of the next cycle”
Possibly at peak levels late September (same as previous peak level 2003/04):-
http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/total_solar_irradiance_plots/sorce_tsi_plot.html
“Due to a combination of the warm phase of the solar cycle and an overdue switch to El Niño – when the ocean gives up a lot of heat to the atmosphere, near-future warming is expected.”
Wishful thinking back in February re the El Niño and the current solar warm phase has pushed levels back up to 2003/4 levels in UAH but not RSS. The chances of going higher on TSI power alone are slim now.
1) Foster and Rahmstorf 2011 explains how MEI, TSI and AOD indexs are converted into C
That would be Figure 3 “Coefficients of temperature response to MEI, AOD and TSI i.e. a theoretical response, not a conversion,
TSI power (thats not an index BTW) can be converted to theoretical temperature on an instantaneous basis as I’ve done in my check – no problem, but that is not what happens in the real world. But an offset of one phenomenon to another is another matter entirely in a physical sense when one is in units of power and the other is an index e.g. MEI/TSI. F&R doesn’t justify how the offset process can create data where there was none previously (and they never will be able to do so). Application of a coefficient then net calculation doesn’t turn an index into measured degrees Celsius that can supersede actual measured degrees C.
2) Foster and Rahmstorf 2011 incorporates process lag for each of the exogenous forcings into the temperature correction.
What is the process lag for TSI to temperature? If you mean Table 1, there is 0 lag for TSI from RSS or UAH and 1 month for the other 3. That is hardly process lag. They say:-
“The influence of exogenous factors can have a delayed effect on global temperature. Therefore for each of the three factors we tested all lag values from 0 to 24 months, then selected the lag values which gave the best fit to the data.”
A 0 (RSS,UAH) or 1 month (others) TSI => temperature lag is fanciful over the ocean. It is not called a heat sink for nothing. Also see this comment re SkS article on thermal lag:-
https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/2012/11/open-thread-27-nov-2012/#comment-157161
3) “Or something” is the correct answer, you are mistaken in your calculation
Explain how exactly.
4) That is what the models are for, they are slightly more sophisticated than your estimate.
But the FAR/TAR levels in RF&C don’t reconcile with the CMIP5 levels do they? The “estimate” is the IPCC methodology, much closer to CMIP5 than FAR/TAR/RF&C. INM-CM4 is right between RSS and UAH, That would make it the most “sophisticated” wouldn’t it?
>”As for your EMD calculation, why don’t you present it properly, as a pdf say. As it is it can’t actually be read and frankly I can’t be bothered fixing it for you”
The Dropbox link to Excel workbook works fine for me, what’s the problem? EMD software I used here:-
http://sidstation.loudet.org/emd-en.xhtml
Or you could just view the chart on the EMD sheet of the workbook. That can’t be hard, surely.
>”…but that is not what happens in the real world”
RF&C’s 0 thermal lag over the ocean (RSS/UAH) implies that the TSI energy laid down over the tracklength of a photon plunging several metres vertically into the tropical ocean is instantly manifest as heat about 1km above the surface that can be immediately detected by a satellite-borne sensor passing overhead. I don’t think so. If that were the case there would be no OHC buildup, no El Niños, no oceanic heat sink, no oceanic heat transport mechanisms bringing warm tropical water down around New Zealand or transporting warm water poleward, and no SST rise.
The only TSI energy instantly available to the atmosphere is radiation reflection and scattering from the surface. Re-emission occurs diurnally. Conduction/convection and evaporation from near-surface follows in hours, days and maybe weeks. The bulk of the energy sequestered deeper down (most of that happens in the tropical zone) stays resident in the mixed layer above the planetary boundary for some indeterminate time (weeks/months/years/decades?) before dissipating maybe by El Niño. Some heat is taken down and moved vast distances over long timeframes (decades or more) by currents before dissipating, again maybe at the surface by El Niño, maybe to extratropical, subpolar or polar regions.
The entire TSI departure from a norm cannot be used as an instantaneous factor (0 or even 1 month lag) because the ocean response is by no means instant no matter what they’ve arrived at statistically. Foster and Rahmstorf have not thought this through.
An alternative approach to RF&C 2012 is to accept without question that the technique is all kosher and that we have a model from which to project from after the 2010+ levels where the series leaves off. Fine, we’ll work from there.
If CO2 is the phenomenon that drives temperature up on the trajectory of RF&C Figure 1 (observations AND simulations) then the level of temperature will continue to rise above the level where the Figure 1 series ends because all other exogenous phenomena are accounted for.
But since 2010 by whatever measurement method – HatAT2 (radiosondes), RSS/UAH (satellites), GISTEMP/HadCRUT (thermometers) – temperatures have fallen down and away from RF&C 2010 levels now that the one major exogenous phenomenon (ENSO) is all but neutral (no adjustment reqd) and another (TSI) looks to be at peak levels (no adjustment either because TSI at peak is close to their 0 TSI anomaly)
RF&C cannot hope for the biggest El Niño the world has ever seen to raise current levels above the end of their series because that effect will have to be removed given their rationale. CO2 hasn’t pushed the level higher. All indications (e.g. PDO) are for a cool period from now out to 2020 or so.
Basically, RF&C are already out-of-the-money.
>”one major exogenous phenomenon (ENSO)”
On reflection, El Niño is not an exogenous phenomenon. It is an accumulation of solar energy from earlier timeframes that is released in one big dollop. Therefore it should not be removed from the series. The smearing of it along the previous 7 previous years by running average for smoothing purposes is a better representation of the event because a large part of the El Niño energy is allocated (roughly) to the period in which it originated.
“But since 2010…” Short term noise. The last refuge of the terminally deluded.
Noise? Since 2010 (i.e. at this juncture in 2012), no ENSO adjustment required, no TSI adjustment required, no AOD adjustment required – in short – no noise (in RF&C’s erroneous terms). What we have before us now in late 2012 is a noiseless level of temperature as defined by RF&C and the anomalies of the “exogenous” factors they’ve used.
But RF&C don’t understand oceanic thermal lag (Rob Painting at SKS does on the other hand). They don’t understand the atmospheric response to TSI via the ocean, neither do they understand El Niño. Consequently, they’ve erroneously defined exogenous factors and “noise” thereby missing an intermediate inflexion that a running average uncovers.
RF&C could have achieved a similar result simply by applying a linear regressed trend to the entire dataset sans exogenous adjustments. Everyone already knows the rising linear trend of temperature series 1980 – present (think NZ7SS and NZCSET v NIWA squabble over rising linear trend – they’re not squabbling over linear rise, but just over the slope). RF&C have done nothing “novel” or “clever” (as Cook or whoever puts it at SKS) by establishing a linear trend (EMD achieves that too).
But by erroneously eliminating the shoulder of data around the turn of the century and being fixated with the overall linear aspect they’ve missed a vital intermediate inflexion in the data. That inflexion is glaringly evident in SST data by use of trends which better represent the data e.g. polynomial. Over time, that inflexion will pull down the long-term linear trend as it is doing with SSL and SST. Tisdale has made an SST data-model comparison here:-
‘Model-Data Comparison: Pacific Ocean Satellite-Era Sea Surface Temperature Anomalies’
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/figure-2.png?w=960&h=630&h=630
From the WUWT post ‘Once again, reality trumps models – Pacific SST’s are flat’:-
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/06/once-again-reality-trumps-models-pacific-ssts-are-flat/#more-75386
Just as with RF&C Figure 1 there is a discrepancy – data vs models (RF&C “data” same as models) – late 2012. The absolute level of CMIP5 and RF&C (assuming their series keeps rising as a result of supposed CO2 forcing) at end of 2012 is imaginary – the data does NOT exist in reality.
If you wish to characterize model output and erroneously invented values as valid data and actual data unaffected by any significant anomalous events as “noise” then I suggest that it is you that is afflicted by delusion Nick – not I.
>”….they’ve missed a vital intermediate inflexion in the data”
Even the CMIP5 ensemble looks to have mimiced the 2003/04 inflexion in the Pacific SST data.
>”Even the CMIP5 ensemble looks to have mimiced the 2003/04 inflexion in the Pacific SST data”
And in the atmosphere, there are at least 2 model runs in amongst the spaghetti of Christy’s EPW plot that have mimiced the inflexion and are on the same flat (even fractionally negative) trajectory as the observations along to 2010 but at a higher absolute level:-
http://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/christy-fig.jpg?w=808&h=622
Add to that Christy’s EPS Figure 2.1 update plot in which INM-CM4 mimics the inflexion, trajectory and absolute level of the observations. There may even be another updated run in the EPS plot (hard to see) that turns at the inflexion and is on the trajectory but is at a higher absolute level making 3 or 4 models that mimic the inflexion and trajectory of observations 2004 – 2010 (Figure 2.1, page 19):-
http://energycommerce.house.gov/sites/republicans.energycommerce.house.gov/files/Hearings/EP/20120920/HHRG-112-IF03-WState-ChristyJ-20120920.pdf
These model runs do not support the monotonic linear rise contention put forward by Rahmstorf, Foster and Cazenave.
How naive of Richard C to think that the RF&C analysis has removed all the noise. In fact if he had bothered to read the abstract of Foster and Rahmstorf 2011 he might have noted that they said “…the global warming signal becomes even more evident as noise is reduced.” Not eliminated as he seems to believe.
Additionally in the body of Foster and Rahmstorf 2011 they state “The full model explains 70%–80% of the variance for all five data sets” not all of it, which further demonstrates his folly.
He does make one valid point when he says that the authors could treat the lag more realistically. However what they have done is demonstrably better than using unadjusted temperature data and it is not clear that a more realistic treatment would be worth the additional complexity. Perhaps a subsequent paper will address this and incrementally improve the result. That would be how science works.
The fact remains that the IPCC projections from 2001 and 2007 for global temperatures have been proven to be remarkable accurate once exogenous factors are removed from the temperature data set.
>”The fact remains that the IPCC projections from 2001 and 2007 for global temperatures have been proven to be remarkable accurate once exogenous factors are removed from the temperature data set.”
Yes, FAR, TAR, out of date data sets, made up “data”, and fallacious rationales are great for gullible folks who live in the past as you appear to Nick. Unfortunately, subsequent CMIP5 runs and late 2012 observed temperature updates disprove what RF&C have previously “proven” (according to you). Some of the models (at least 3, maybe 4) have improved considerably since CMIP3 (2007) to the extent of mimicing observed temperature trajectory in GAT and SST (a flat trajectory since 2003/04) as pointed out here:-
https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/2012/11/open-thread-27-nov-2012/#comment-157726
Models, rather than “remove” RF&C’s “exogenous” factors actually account for TSI and El Niño. They don’t mimic the El Niño fluctuation that releases energy in one short time span but they do account for the energy input from solar that contributes to it and they release it over a broader span. That is why a 7 year running mean of observed temperature provides an (almost) apples-to-apples comparison of models to observations and El Niño energy should be left in the series, not taken out as F&R/RF&C do i.e. El Niño is not an “exogenous” factor.
Same for TSI by model use of a solar “constant” that normally would represent the peaks and troughs of TSI because the ocean modulates the fluctuating solar input anyway and there is no instantaneous atmospheric response to TSI over the ocean as RF&C would have us believe (and as you in your naivety appear to Nick).
Unfortunately (again), the sun is not playing by modelers rules. The latest peak in TSI looks unlikely to reach the 2000 levels of the VIRGO series here (fractionally below RF&C’s 0 anomaly baseline at present):-
http://www.pmodwrc.ch/tsi/virgo/pics/virr_6_002_1210a.png
SSNs are similarly not reaching the predicted peak. Therefore the solar “constant” is no longer valid and will have to be adjusted as Lean and others do periodically. This means that there will not be as much energy in the oceanic heat sink (lagged heat) to sustain future temperatures (“warming” as Rob Painting puts it at SKS) and we are seeing the early stages of the solar recession predicted by astrophysics. It also means that all IPCC GCM simulations to date will have used an invalid solar constant for at least the next 30 yrs and probably out to 2100.
And rather than be an instantaneous manifestation in atmospheric temperature, that present lower level of TSI peak will not translate to atmospheric temperature for some time, maybe end of 2013 (no El Niño predicted for 2013) or sometime in 2014. Because TSI is “real” power (in electrical terms) i.e. higher intensity, frequency and energy-per-photon as opposed to the “apparent” power of CO2 LWIR (lower intensity, frequency and energy-per-photon) there wont be an offset from rising CO2 and there will be less re-emitted solar energy available to be intercepted by CO2 anyway.
So rather than a global “warming” signal being evident as you content Nick, it is a global cooling signal that is emerging. Foster and Rahmstorf miss that signal completely of course
>”Not eliminated as he seems to believe”
If by this statement you are alluding to significant factors that F&R have neglected to consider e.g. cloud forcing, then perhaps you could present a synopsis of the comparative effect of that forcing (W/m2 comparisons) over the last 30 yrs with particular attention to each decade Nick?
With recourse to relevant and up to date papers and reports of course.
Ta.
As mentioned before Nick, if Rahmstorf is correct then he undermines the AGW hypothesis further due to the fact that the discrepancy between what was predicted and what is observed is even worse. A surface temperature that is rising faster than the upper troposphere proves there is no positive feedback from water vapour, and if Rahmstorf says the surface is rising even faster then it only reinforces and strengthens the fact.
Over 30,000,000 radiosondes and 2 satellites reinforce the empirical truth, & all you have to do to believe in AGW is ignore all three corroborating lines of evidence in favour of unfounded and empirically disproved speculation.
I don’t know why you pro AGW guys keep going on about AGW when the lack of a hot spot stops your theory in it’s tracks, perhaps it’s just easier to ignore the inconvenient. Everything else fails without it as there is no proof that the warming has anything to do with mankind’s emissions except for the 1.2C max. per doubling of total atmospheric CO2 levels. Especially when the temperature rise bears no difference to previous records that is supposed to be natural.
>”Unfortunately……the sun is not playing by modelers rules”
>”…..means that all IPCC GCM simulations to date will have used an invalid solar constant for at least the next 30 yrs and probably out to 2100″
Constant and forcing. Solar forcing 1850 to 2050 in GISS Model E:-
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/solar.irradiance/Fig2.gif
From Forcings in GISS Climate Model – Solar Irradiance
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/solar.irradiance/
From 2000 onwards, the Max, Min and 11 year cycle length is assumed to continue unabated from late 1980s level. Already by late 2012 that is not playing out.
When Will it Start Cooling?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/13/when-will-it-start-cooling/
SC 24 could extend to 17 years long ending in 2024, leaving 12.5 years of cooling from mid-2013. Some of the more radical solar predictions are for grand minimum conditions. Viera et al 2011 reconstructed Holocene TSI finding about 1.5 W.m2 min to max. The 2000 peak was near max levels so the extent of possible reduced TSI expectation should not exclude 1 W.m2.
Sun Headed Into Hibernation, Solar Studies Predict
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/06/110614-sun-hibernation-solar-cycle-sunspots-space-science/
There was some alarmist stuff on TV3 last night about the melting Antartica which apparently is worse than we thought,featuring some of the usual suspects. The residents of Dunedin are worried about sea level rise.
My 12 year old son, who knows how to wind me up, says “we need to build more wind farms Dad”
>”…the melting Antartica”
SMH reports Shepherd et al ‘Antarctic ice sheets shrinking, study finds’ [GRACE past 20 years]
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/antarctic-ice-sheets-shrinking-study-finds-20121130-2ajmf.html
So I checked RSS and UAH southern polar:-
http://junksciencearchive.com/MSU_Temps/RSSSPol.png
http://junksciencearchive.com/MSU_Temps/UAHMSUSPol-m.png
Temperatures were higher than present back in the early 80s [decrease over past 30 years] so that’s not the agent unless it is just a generally higher temperature regime than say 200 – 500 years ago or whatever. Quoting from the article:-
“Satellite measurements [GRACE] have confirmed Antarctica is losing land-bound ice to climate change, ending years of uncertainty.”
Then I read of the Harig and Simons paper reported at WUWT ‘More on noisy Greenland ice loss data from GRACE’:-
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/11/29/more-on-noisy-data-from-grace/
Quoting (starting at sixth paragraph):-
The researchers tested their method on GRACE data for Greenland recorded from 2003 to 2010 and brought the complexities of the island’s glaciers into clearer focus. While overall ice loss on Greenland consistently increased between 2003 and 2010, Harig and Simons found that it was in fact very patchy from region to region.
In addition, the enhanced detail of where and how much ice melted allowed the researchers to estimate that the annual acceleration in ice loss is much lower than previous research has suggested, roughly increasing by 8 billion tons every year. Previous estimates were as high as 30 billion tons more per year.
“GRACE data is notoriously noisy and spatially spread out, and this has resulted in ‘ad hoc’ methods for processing mass changes of Earth’s ice sheets that have wildly different values,” said MacAyeal, who is familiar with the Princeton work but had no role in it.
“In other words, each particular investigator ends up getting a different individual number for the net change in mass,” he said. “What this research does is figure out a way to be more thoughtful and purposeful about exactly how to deal with GRACE’s notorieties. This method would allow researchers to standardize a bit more and also to understand more precisely where they are, and where they are not, able to resolve ice changes.”
As expected, ice loss occurred in the lower, warmer coastal areas — as opposed to the higher and colder interior, which gained ice mass — but the melt was concentrated on the southeast and northwest coasts for most of the period studied. Indeed, many coastal areas showed no ice-mass loss, while the ice sheet on the southwest coast actually thickened slightly from 2003 to 2006.
But these trends were more complex when Harig and Simons got into the details. Surprisingly, the location of the greatest melt activity migrated around the island, shifting from the southeast to the northwest coast in just a few years. Ice loss on the southeast coast built up starting in 2003 and hit a highpoint in 2007. In 2008, loss on this coast began to recede and shift toward the northwest coast; by 2010, the southeast coast displayed only minor ice loss, while nearly the entire western coast exhibited the most severe melt. During this transition, melt also receded then picked up again on the northeastern coast with seemingly little overlap with activity elsewhere.
[…]
“Scientists are not totally sure what the driving force of the melt on Greenland is on short, yearly timescales,” Harig said. “There is no certainty about which outside factor is the most important or if all of them contribute. Being able to compare what is happening regionally to field observations from other researchers of what a glacier is doing helps us figure out what is causing all this melt.”
# # #
The Harig and Simons technique is completely new so it is unlikely that Shepherd et al employed it in their GRACE study rendering the Shepherd et al findings of a temporary nature. The “driving force” attribution will be equally unclear to the Greenland study even if the technique ever is employed and confirms Shepherd et al (that’s not a given either). Basically there is nothing from Shepherd et al to finger an anthro cause so although it is “a milestone study”, co-author Professor Matt King’s gushing (“the importance of this work should not be understated”) is perhaps a little premature.
This is the TV3 piece I was referring to
http://www.3news.co.nz/Ice-sheets-melting-at-poles-faster-than-before/tabid/1216/articleID/278756/Default.aspx
Here is the paper that has set the media in a frenzy about Antarctica
“A Reconciled Estimate of Ice-Sheet Mass Balance”
Sheppard et al.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/338/6111/1183.short
Specifically
“Since 1992, the polar ice sheets have contributed, on average, 0.59 ± 0.20 millimeter year−1 to the rate of global sea-level rise”
Which is why the people of Dunedin are concerned about inundation due to sea level rise (according to TV3)
Shepherd not Sheppard Andy, Curiously there’s an accompanying review article in the same November Science journal volume (bottom of page) that the media is not so enthusiastic about. Also reported in this Science Daily article:-
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/11/121129143312.htm
I. Joughin, R. B. Alley, D. M. Holland. Ice-Sheet Response to Oceanic Forcing. Science, 2012; 338 (6111): 1172 DOI: 10.1126/science.1226481
Abstract
The ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica are losing ice at accelerating rates, much of which is a response to oceanic forcing, especially of the floating ice shelves. Recent observations establish a clear correspondence between the increased delivery of oceanic heat to the ice-sheet margin and increased ice loss. In Antarctica, most of these processes are reasonably well understood but have not been rigorously quantified. In Greenland, an understanding of the processes by which warmer ocean temperatures drive the observed retreat remains elusive. Experiments designed to identify the relevant processes are confounded by the logistical difficulties of instrumenting ice-choked fjords with actively calving glaciers. For both ice sheets, multiple challenges remain before the fully coupled ice-ocean-atmosphere models needed for rigorous sea-level projection are available.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/338/6111/1172
I suspect that part of the story (oceanic forcing) along with the Harig and Simons finding will be kept very quiet given that it can’t be made to fit the anthropogenic CO2 forcing meme.
Harig:-
“From 2003 to 2010, Greenland overall lost roughly 200 billion tons of ice each year, but glacier activity was regionally inconsistent. Ice loss was concentrated on the southeast and northwest coasts for most of the period, but the area of greatest melt activity began to migrate from the southeast to the northwest coast around 2008. By 2010, the southeast coast displayed only minor ice loss. Meanwhile, the higher and colder interior gained ice mass, as did the southwest coast, slightly, from 2003 to 2006”.
Image by Christopher Harig:-
http://www.princeton.edu/main/images/news/2012/11/simonsgreenland_annual-change_575.jpg
I am interested to know how we reconcile the apparent loss in land ice with the increase in sea ice in Antarctica
>”I am interested to know how we reconcile the apparent loss in land ice with the increase in sea ice in Antarctica”
This NIWA paper was recently in the news Andy (paywalled):-
‘Atmospheric Forcing of Antarctic Sea Ice on Intraseasonal Time Scales’
James A. Renwick, Alison Kohout, and Sam Dean (2012)
NIWA, Wellington, New Zealand
Abstract
Intraseasonal relationships between Antarctic sea ice and atmospheric circulation have been investigated using a 29-yr record of pentad-mean Antarctic sea ice concentration and Southern Hemisphere 500-hPa height fields. Analyses were carried out for four sea ice seasons: minimum extent, growth, maximum extent, and decay. Interannual variability was removed from both datasets to focus on intraseasonal variations. Patterns of sea ice variability and linkages to the atmospheric circulation varied markedly with season. The strongest and most coherent relationships were evident during the maximum ice extent period and to a lesser degree during the growth period. At those times of year, the strongest relationships were associated with atmospheric circulation anomalies leading sea ice anomalies by 4 or 5 days, suggesting that variations in the atmospheric circulation force changes in the sea ice field. Ice decreases are generally found in regions of poleward flow and ice increases are found in regions of equatorward flow. Mechanisms appear to be related both to thermal advection and to mechanical forcing, with the relative importance of each varying in space and in time. During the period of maximum ice extent, the leading pattern from a maximum covariance analysis between 500-hPa height and sea ice concentration accounted for 38% of the squared covariance between fields, and the associated time series were correlated at 0.74. The leading patterns of variability exhibit clear zonal wavenumber 3 signatures and appear to be largely a result of internal variability in the extratropical circulation.
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00423.1
Also found this model-based paper from 2007 that stretches credibility to breaking point in my mind but I’ll leave you to make you own assessment:-
‘Increasing Antarctic Sea Ice under Warming Atmospheric and Oceanic Conditions’
Jinlun Zhang (2007)
Polar Science Center, Applied Physics Laboratory, College of Ocean and Fishery Sciences, University of Washington.
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI4136.1
# # #
One study atmospheric forcing (NIWA), the other oceanic forcing (as with Joughin, Alley, and Holland – Greenland). Neither really reconciles your question but the NIWA explanation offers more in terms of Antarctic sea ice I think.
Basically, any analysis – as with Harig and Simons – must break down into a number of seasonal and regional micro studies to really get to grips with what is happening. Renwick, Kohout, and Dean appear to have done that with sea ice but I don’t think Stephens et al have done a seasonal/regional exercise with the land ice mass although I’ll have to check once I get access to the full paper.
Then it remains to see how the sea ice changes relate to land ice mass changes in seasonal/regional micro studies (e.g. Greenland interior gaining mass). That would be the best reconciliation I can think of.
>”I am interested to know how we reconcile the apparent loss in land ice with the increase in sea ice in Antarctica”
Two VERY illuminating commentaries on Shepherd et al 2012:-
New Ice Surveys Finds Slower Ice-sheet Melting
http://theresilientearth.com/?q=content/new-ice-surveys-finds-slower-ice-sheet-melting
Why ice loss and sea level measurements via satellite and the new Shepherd et al paper are highly uncertain at the moment
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/03/why-ice-loss-and-sea-level-measurements-via-satellite-and-the-new-shepard-et-al-paper-are-highly-uncertain-at-the-moment/
I met some people last night who live off grid in the countryside near here. They have a diesel generator plus $40,000 worth of solar PV panels. Unfortunately a recent electrical storm seems to have blown the system. Not only that, but a neighbor of theirs with $20,000 worth of PV also suffered the same fate.
I don’t know if these were insured or are repairable. Not a good outcome at all.
Cameron Slater writes of that Denier Letter (sic) to Ban Ki Moon
http://www.whaleoil.co.nz/2012/12/129-scientists-write-open-letter-to-ban-ki-moon-about-climate-change/
David Cunliffe on climate change:
http://blog.labour.org.nz/2012/10/25/38028/
While I am not a political animal, I am always deeply interested in politics and was very amused by the spectacle one D Cunliffe made of himself at his party’s annual conference. I was interested to hear of the almost-immediate lift in the Labour leader’s post-conference popularity/profile as a result of Cunliffe being put back in his box!
Following your link, I note that the same D Cunliffe takes the same line as Hansen over climate change and the unborn generations to come, which has cancelled any credibility he may have had for me. Reading the comments on that thread makes it clear that Helen’s legacy in Wellingtonograd is alive and well.
Should anyone reading this suspect I am a fan of Mr Key, please divest yourself of that notion immediately. I have seen politicians come and politicians go over many years and I suspect Mr Key regards himself sufficiently highly to not need any support from me.
When I was a teenager, my Dad warned me not take anyone seriously who wanted my vote as there was obviously something wrong with him/her.
And isn’t it lovely without Brandoch and his ilk bombing this thread with their nonsense?
I think the “borrowing from our children” phrase could also be applied to Quantitative Easing, a monetary technique favoured by Russel Norman, of the Greens
Andy Says:
December 3, 2012 at 3:20 pm
I think the “borrowing from our children” phrase could also be applied to Quantitative Easing, a monetary technique favoured by Russel Norman, of the Greens
We all know that this (QE) is debasement of our currency. But it is stealing from the present savers. Fortunately the banks in N.Z. are not guilty of the excesses of their American and British counterparts. The finance companies here bore the brunt of that and they are gone the way the British and American banks (should) go. This or at least face up to the responsibilities of their present ‘off the balance sheet’ and hidden debt. I prefer John Key’s more measured approach on this but we are in troublesome times that no one wants or probably knows how, to confront.
And
o Alexander K says:
December 3, 2012 at 3:14 pm
Alaxander K And isn’t it lovely without Brandoch and his ilk bombing this thread with their nonsense?
Yes. I invited him politely to leave earlier but of course he needed a shove.
Douglas
I am puzzled, Andy, as to why the world in general thinks the awful Mugabe is even crazier when he has money printed in large quantities, but when Greens and other political groupings support the idea, the practice is suddenly renamed ‘quantitive easing’ and becomes theoretically different in every way. ‘Quantative Easing is actually stealing from my pension fund and that annoys me more than somewhat!
I too look forward to reading Bruce’s rebuttal letter in ‘North and South’, but I don’t expect any MSM journalist to think differently from the Establishment. It takes guts and some intellect to think for oneself. The best we can hope for is that Global Warming (or whatever it’s name of the day is) will just fade away as a topic, as journalists do not like admitting mistakes.
The false science of eugenics also just faded away. It was all the fashion in the early 20th century. All the major science establishments, politicians, etc were onboard with this. There was a “consensus”. Then came WW2, the Germans took eugenics to the extreme, and after the war it was quietly forgotten about.
I don’t know if any of you have seen the editorial in the latest North & South; it is an ugly Lewandowsky-esk attack on climate sceptics as being conspiracy-believing nutters, who should be ignored. I wrote them a letter in rebuttal which they have confirmed they are going to publish – a bit nervous about it as I’m not a brain-box like you fellas, I just know pernicious BS when I read it!
Sounds great Bruce, I look forward to reading your letter!
THE VENUS DILEMMA
Let me try to explain better why carbon dioxide has no effect …
The process of diffusion in the vertical direction in a gravitational field effectively turns a “level base” into a “sloping base” like a concrete driveway running down a hillside.
This diffusion process ensures that the sum of the PE and KE of individual molecules has a propensity towards equality in all molecules at all altitudes. Those lower down (with less PE) thus have higher KE, leading to higher temperature in the lower regions.
There will be some absorption of Solar insolation at all levels in the Venus atmosphere, because we know at least some gets through to the surface. Think of this absorption as being like lots of different size loads of sand dumped on that sloping driveway. In general, the piles will be smaller as you go towards the top. So there’s no real propensity for convection rising in the atmosphere (sand from higher piles flowing down through the bigger piles further down the slope) so what happens is simply that the amount of radiation varies at different levels to get rid of the sand. But it stops when it gets down to the concrete driveway. The mean amount of radiation has to equate with the incident radiation, so this requirement (long ago) set the level of the driveway, but not its gradient – gravity and the specific heat of the gas set the gradient.
Now I know that some radiation (roughly half) is directed towards the hotter surface, but those who understand what Prof Johnson proved, will realise that the electro-magnetic energy in such radiation is never converted to thermal energy in a hotter region than that from whence it came. Instead it is immediately re-emitted, just as if “pseudo scattered.” Hence the energy in all radiation from the atmosphere always ends up eventually getting to space, even if it strikes the surface, or gets partly absorbed by cooler gas and subsequently re-emitted.
So the diffusion process in a gravitational field sets the gradient of the temperature plot in the atmosphere, with some small variation depending on the specific heat of the gases. The incident Solar radiative flux sets the overall level. These combine to produce a sloping, near linear temperature plot which of course intercepts the surface at a temperature which is determined by the input factors just mentioned, and nothing else.
Any additional absorption of either incident or upwelling radiation merely adds temporary energy which will be quickly radiated away and, even though such radiation is in all directions, it will eventually transfer energy out of the planetary system and back to space.
Venus is a good example, because it is so much more obvious that the surface is not heated to the temperature it reaches by the direct Solar radiation it absorbs. Instead, an interplay of conduction (diffusion) and radiation at the surface/atmosphere interface keeps the surface at a temperature close to that of the base of the atmosphere.
Which came first – the chicken or the egg? The temperature of the base of the atmosphere must have come first because otherwise it would be just too much of a coincidence that the same formula “works” on all planets with sufficient atmospheres.
So, if you don’t accept the above, then please explain in a similar level of detail, exactly what you think explains the surface temperature, being sure to keep within the confines of the laws of thermodynamics and atmospheric physics, as I have.
Doug Cotton
Sydney
I decided to keep an eye out at SkS for Ari Jokimäki’s ‘New research from last week’ to see if ‘Global and diffuse solar radiation in Spain: Building a homogeneous dataset and assessing their trends’ – Sanchez-Lorenzo et al. (2012) was listed. It was (third down):-
http://www.skepticalscience.com/new_research_48_2012.html
Ari’s update’s are very useful I find. Cook didn’t feature the paper of course, preferring Rahmstorf et al.
And now for something completely different:
U.N. Agency Says 2012 Celebrities Hottest On Record
http://www.theonion.com/articles/un-agency-says-2012-celebrities-hottest-on-record,30570/
Taking a trip down memory lane, from the glory days of climate alarmism, this one from Geoffrey Lean.
Truly outstanding weapons grade tosh, MSM back then reads like the Daily Mash today
http://web.archive.org/web/20100817023019/http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/why-antarctica-will-soon-be-the-ionlyi-place-to-live–literally-561947.html
Monckton is being deported from Qatar:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/06/monckton-gets-evicted-fro0m-doha-conference/
Exxon Hates your Children
http://exxonhatesyourchildren.com/
Yet the same people who made this video are probably quite happy for Exxon and others to pay them for climate research,and to fly to Doha business class
Such utter, total, hypocrites.
These activists make my flesh crawl
Site domain owned by this guy:
http://andrewboyd.com/